NAT. ORDER. CACTEiE. 
181 
tube ; jyetals imbricated, sub-patent ; the outer ones short, thick, and 
fleshy, the inner from half an inch to an inch long ; style, longer than 
the stamens, pale-yellow, thickish, swollen downwards, solid, or with 
only a thread-like, central hollow towards the top ; stigma of gener- 
ally five, sometimes four, pale-yellow, finally ferruginous bordered, 
erect, subcoimivant, ovate lobes ; filaments and anthers pale ; germcn 
half or three quarters of an inch long, cup-shaped at top, uneven, 
bearing a minute, fleshy, ovate-globose, yellowish, deciduous leaf at 
the summit of each irregular tubercle, inside of which is a fascicle of 
short, minute, chestnut bristles ; a vertical section discovers the cen- 
tral, subtriangular, cell-like ovarium, containing from one to five 
ovules ; fruit subglobose, approaching to oval more or less, with the 
cup-shaped hollow at the top obsolete, so as to be often truncate, 
from an inch to an inch and-a-half in diameter, the color of a Mag- 
num-bonum Plum ; perfectly even, but furnished with short, dense 
fascicles, tufts, or branches, of rich chestnut-colored bristles, contras- 
^ ting beautifully with the delicate transparent yellow of the thin, 
smooth skin ; a few of these are twice as long as the rest ; all are 
extremely deciduous, brittle, and acute, so as to render the exami- 
nation of the fruit more than ordinarily troublesome. It is hardly 
possible to touch the plant when in fructification without getting 
the skin or closes full of these bristles ; inside of the fruit pale yel- 
lowish-white, containing in the middle from one to four, much flat- 
tened, rather large round seeds, three or four lines in diameter, en- 
veloped in a singular, dense^ cottony mass of fibres ; the fruit is rather 
agreeable, juicy, with a fine acid, somewhat resembling an indiflfer- 
ent, hard-fleshed, or unripe Plum, with a smell and slight flavor 
like the leaf-stalks of garden Rhubarb. Its principal flowering sea- 
son is May and June. 
