398 
44. RUBIACEJE. 
turf, as also on the walls of the old ruined Fort on P. do Gas- 
tello more robust and luxuriant. Apr.-June. — A small incon- 
spicuous extremely delicate and fragile short-lived pi., growing 
subcespitosely amongst the short fine mountain turf or filling 
crevices of rocks. Root very small and slender. St. 2-4 in. 
long, rarely o or 6 in. and then more spreading or diffuse, re- 
peatedly and regularly dichotomously branched from the base 
upwards, extremely fine and brittle shining smooth remotely 
and sparingly aculeolate. L. small thin and delicate not reti- 
culate remarkably broad and short, 2-4 millim. long, 1-2 broad, 
the lowest roundish oval, all conspicuously and abruptly aris- 
tate at the tip and attenuated at the base into a more or less 
distinct petiole, dark g r., turning rather black in drying. FI. 
sometimes single but mostly two together each on its own 
axillary pedic. 1-3 millim. long, rarely depauperato-cymose i. e. 
elevated singly or in pairs on a common 1-leafed ped. and then 
a little longer than the 1. (in other words, cymes bifid stalked 
1-foliate 2-fld.), and especially in more robust luxuriant pi., by 
the shortening or abortion of the upper internodes or branches, 
congested into little dense leafy 3-6-fid. terminal glomerules 
or heads, but still properly and truly axillary and in no sense 
paniculate. Pedic. from once to twice the diam. of the fr. in 
length, in fr. divaricate and sometimes reflexed; but the ped., 
when there is any, always straight and erect : both are quite 
smooth and unarmed. Fr. 1-14 millim. in diam. globose or a 
little transversely oval, thickly clothed with rather coarse 
brownish-grey strongly hooked setre, equalling or rather ex- 
ceeding in length its own semidiam., brownish and thickened 
downwards. 
This elegant little pi. comes nearest to G. recurvum Req. in 
1)C. iv. 609, but disagrees with the description 1. c. in its erect 
or diffusely suberect regularly dichotomous st., mostly gemi- 
nate pedic. or sometimes 2- (but never 3-) fid. ped., the former 
never hirsute and only rarely deflexed in fr. It also ap- 
proaches G. minutulum Jord. 
Another apparently undescribed sp., closely allied to the preceding 
as well as to G. recurvum Req., found by myself in Febr. 1864 
abundantly a little below the summit of Monte Gordo in the 
island of Sao Nieolao, one of the Cape Verdes, and again, 
I860, in Fogo another of the group on the Chao da Relva at 
the foot of the great Volcanic Cone, at an elevation of OOCO or 
8000 ft., may be thus characterized : 
G. intricatum Lowe: annuum puberulum glabrescens, caulibus nu- 
merosis gracilibus tenuissimis capillaribus basi intricato-ramo- 
sis subcespitosis superne simplicibus elongato-prostratis v. pro- 
cumbentibus retrorsum minutissimesetuloso-spinulosis v. acu- 
