82 
64. SOLAKACEiE. 
Hist. Sol. 212, t. 2, B (fr.) ; ejusd. Syn. 39. S. pomiferum 
foliis Quercus utrinque spinosis,Jlore Borraginis Moris. Hist. iii. 
521, § 13. t. 1. f. 15. — Shr. per. Mad. reg. 1, |. .Roadsides, 
waste ground, especially at the back of the beach towards Fort 
S l Iago, and about ruined walls or houses in and near Funchal 
but scarcely above the Levada de S 1 * Luzia. At most seasons 
but chiefly July-Dee. — A low erect bushy leafy shr. 1-3 ft. 
high, with mostly straggling or diffusely spreading or ascend- 
ing somewhat flexuous stiff and rigid rounded, whilst young 
shining full dark gr. or purplish- v., when old pale ash-coloured 
branches, and copious spinose oak-leaf-like full or dark gr. 
shining handsome foliage. All parts of the pi. spinose ; spines 
straight dilated and compressed at the base, yellowish or pale 
fawn-coloured ; those on the 1. scattered and much longer than 
those of the st., petioles and cal. Petioles short 2 or 3-9 lines 
long. L. 2-4 in. long, 14-3 broad, with broad widely rounded 
entire sinuses and remote bluntly 3-lobed lobes ; sprinkled thinly 
with stellate hairs (like the young shoots, petioles, ped., pedic. 
and cal.) whilst young, presently glabrescent. Ped. f-1 in. 
long, mostly 2-5-fld., with a separate single longer-pedicelled 
fructiferous fl. at its base, the rest mostly non-productive ; ped. 
erecto-patent, pedic. reflexed, the latter in the fr.-bearing fl. 
with the cal. closely spinose, in the barren nearly or quite un- 
armed, all stellato-furfuraceous. Fl. about 9 lines in diam. 
fine v.-blue or lilac. Cal. small, in the fr.-bearing fl. thickly, 
in the upper barren fl. sparingly or not at all spinose ; lobes 
ovato-lanceolate. Cor. plicate, stellato-patent, lobes outside 
stellato-pubescent. Anth. equal oblong full bright chrome-y. 
Fr. drooping large conspicuous, the size of a crab-apple or rose- 
apple, whilst immature dark gr. marbled or mottled at top 
with diffused milky blotches, streaks or veins; when ripe 
lemon- passing into chrome-v., subunilocular juiceless and dry 
within and bitter-tasted ; whence supposed to be those apples 
of the Dead Sea, fair to the eye, but filled with only dust and 
bitterness*; skin smooth shining coriaceous not fleshy ; seeds 
compressed, oval-oblong 3-4 mill, long 2-3 broad, shining pale 
or dark coffee-brown or tawny, finely reticulato-granulate or 
shagreened, very narrowly limbate. — The tempting-looking fr. 
is often infested with Uirvce , eating out all its contents and 
leaving only literally u dust and ashes ” under its persistent 
golden fair outside. 
* “ The fruitage fair to sight like that which grew 
Fear that bituminous lake where Sodom flam’d.” 
M ilt. Pah. Lost. x. vv. 5G1, 562. 
