13 
Height to several feet. Flowering under ordinary circum- 
stances only once from the same root. Stem robust, much streaked 
and rather angular, occasionally the upper portion somewhat beset 
with crisp or floccous kairlets. Leaves spacious, some to 2 feet 
long, the lower somewhat pinnatilobed or only sinuated, the upper 
with bilobed base amply clasping but otherwise often lobeless, 
indented, all spinular-denticulated, glabrous, shining-green and 
usually with whitish spots and whitish costular and venular mark- 
ings. Headlets very large, soon erect, as broad as long or broader, 
almost flat at the base, singly terminal, often conspicuously 
stalked. Involucral bracts mostly of foliaceous texture, the 
outermost broadly stipitate, nearly cordate or semiorbicular, spi- 
nular-denticulated and spinescently long-acuminated ; the more 
middle bracts very long and much spreading, towards the base 
entire and almost stalklike, though also broad and flat, thence 
passing into a deltoid or cordate-orbicular large dilatation, con- 
cave or channelled, irregularly spinular-denticulate and gradually 
terminating in a long spinule; the innermost bracts almost linear- 
lanceolar, more or quite entire and somewhat scarious. Flowers 
numerous, with very copious setulous-capillulary persistent bracts 
between them. Corolla upwards purplish, reddish or rarely white 
to beyond the middle slender-filiform, then suddenly widening 
and cleft into five somewhat unequal linear-elliptic lobes. Sta- 
mens alternate to the corolla-lobes, their filaments for the greater 
part of their length connate into a tube; anthers purplish, linear- 
sagittate. Style filiform ; stigmas somewhat broader, coherent 
except at the summit, purplish, soon exserted. Fruit ovate- 
ellipsoid, truncate, considerably compressed, smooth, with a pro- 
truding apex, outside dark- brown, with slight paler variegation. 
Bristlets of the pappus flattisli, clliolar-serrulated or those of the 
outer flowers slightly plumous, connectedly deciduous, not very 
much longer than the ripe fruit. 
Explanation of Plate IV. 
Flowering branch with its leaves, natural size. 
1. Longitudinal section of a headlet of flowers. 
2. A complete flower with young fruit and pappus. 
3. Stamens with summit of the corolla and only upper 
portion of the filamental tube. 
4. Stigma and upper portion of the style. 
5. A hracteal bristlet and a pappus-bristlet. 
6. A fruit. 
7. Transverse section of a fruit, showing also the cotyle- 
dons of the seed. 
8. Embryo. 
2-8. Enlarged, but to various extent. 
