Descr. Acaulescent, stoloniferous. Produced leaves twelve 
to fifteen, forming a dense basal rosette, lorate, horny in 
texture, reaching a length of twelve or fifteen inches, and a 
breadth of under two inches above the middle, so deeply 
channelled that they are semicircular in horizontal section in 
the lower half, bright green, and quite naked all down the 
face, thinly white-lepidote all down the back without any 
transverse bands, deltoid- cuspidate at the point, the edge 
bordered all down with close small erecto-patent lanceolate 
brown teeth. Scape about a foot long, central, entirely 
hidden by the imbricated lanceolate adpressed green horny 
toothed bracts. Flowers in a dense oblong head, three or 
four inches long, and under a couple of inches in diameter, 
each subtended by a squarrose bright scarlet horny toothed 
bract ; upper bracts without any flowers in their axils 
Ovary globose, a quarter of an inch long, the side nearest the 
axis much less convex than the outer one. Sepals lanceolate- 
deltoid, connivent, under half an inch long, bright scarlet in 
the lower flowers of the head, white in the upper ones, acute, 
but not spine-tipped. Fetals pale, Ungulate, imperfectly 
developed in the specimen drawn. Stamens about as long as 
the calyx, those opposite the petals furnished with a pair 
of small scales at the base — J. G. Baker. 
Fig. 1, A single flower, and its clasping bract; 2, petaline stamen and its 
basal scales ; 3, pistil : — all magnified. 
