310 
37 . MESEMBRI ANTHEM ACEiE. 
not papulose. St. 2-4 ft. long, forming large tliick beds, yet 
sparingly branched, irregularly tortuose or flexuose, rooting here 
and there from the joints, the ends ascending upright, thick 
fleshy succulent compressed sharply 2-angular or _? -edged leafy 
pale gr. often reddish or purple as thick as the little finger, 
thinner brown hard and woody downwards and, as it w r ere, 
jointed rough and rugged with the prominent dry sheathing 
bases of the old 1. L. quite even without dots or papilla, dark 
full gr., large fleshy 14-3 in. long, £ in. broad, \ in. deep, the 
sides flat, the upper surface slightly concave with a raised tumid 
crescent-shaped or horseslioe-like stem-clasping wheal or border 
at the base, nearly straight or only slightly falcate or incurved 
acute, their sheaths hard tumid knobbed. FI. solitary with 
erect very stout and thick strongly 2-edged ped. dilated up- 
wards, without bracts, short but sometimes as long as the up- 
permost pair of 1. : the fl. 2-3 in. in diam. opening only in hot 
snnshine, uniformly in Mad. pale faded straw-col., greenish 
towards the centre or base of the very numerous narrow strap- 
shaped pet. which are f-1 in. long and scarcely 1 line wide. 
Sep. fleshy horn-like and triquetrous like the 1., spreading, 
very unequal, 1 or 2 being 1-2 in. long, the rest irregularly 
much shorter, all dilated and the smaller broadly so with a 
membranous or scarious wing or hood at the base. Stam. about 
| length of pet., very numerous in a broad crown-like ring, with 
small ochre-y. anthers. Stigmas 10 horizontally spreading or 
reflexed, sub flexuose sigmatoidally like the rays of an Ophiurus. 
1 have never found the fr. such as could be called in any sense 
eatable, either in Mad. or at the back of the hot beach of Porto 
S t0 . Still at the Cape it has the char, in books of being so, at 
least with the Hottentots ; and, which may be more worth 
attention, the leaves or shoots are said when boiled to be avail- 
able for food. 
The rapid spread in PS. of this pi. is most remarkable. In- 
troduced from Mad. by S r Joao Ant 0 Pedroso in or shortly after 
1834 along with Tamarix gallica L., it had already in 1855 
overspread in vast beds the whole sandy region at the back 
of the beach about the town and chiefly to the eastward. I 
also found large patches of it on a bare flat rocky place a little 
below the top of Pico do Gastello. It was introd. first into the 
neighbourhood of the Mount in Mad. by the late J. I). W. Gor- 
don, Esq., about 1825. 
There is a purple-fid. var. (Bot. Keg. 20. t. 1732), but it has 
not occurred in Mad. 
