FLORA OF ADEN . 
139 
petioles deeply striate ; stipules 2 pairs of sharp thorns ; leaflets linear, 
acute, sessile or with short petiolules. 
Flowers pale rose-coloured. Sepals ovate, aristate. Petals twice as long 2 * * 5 
as the sepals, spathulate ; claw long. Ovary hairy ; style tapering. 
Fruit glandular pubescent, rounded at the base, pyramidal towards the 
apex, deeply 5-partite almost to the axis. Seeds ovoid, acute, flattened, 
smooth. 
Fruits: — December 1847 (Hooker), March 1878 (Perry), April 1861 
(Thomson) . 
Locality : — On the slope of the Shum Shum Eange (Edgew., Hook, 
Anders., Balf., Ellenbeck) ; great valley between Steamer Point and town 
(Marchesetti) ; without locality (Birdw., Perry, Schweinf .) . 
Distribution : — Both shores of the Mediterranean, in S. extra-tropical 
Africa, warmer dry parts of Asia, Western N. and S. America. 
Note : — The form and size of the leaves and stipules of Fagonia 
cretica are very variable ; sometimes the leaves are nearly absent, and 
their place is supplied by the long and hard spiny stipules ; in other cases 
the leaves are for the most part simple with inconspicuous stipules, 
but in some states of this variety the leaves are nearly elliptical and the 
spines exceed the leaves in length. There is also great difference in the 
amount of general pubescence ; it varies from nearly perfect smoothness 
to viscosity. 
The specimens collected by Hooker and Thomson are named var. 
subinermis Boiss. in the Kew Herbarium. We prefer to drop this varietal 
name ; there would be no end of varieties, if we wanted to describe all 
the different forms of this extremely variable plant. 
2. Fagonia parviflora Boiss. Diag. PI. Or. ser. I, VIII, 124. 
Var. brevispina Schweinf. Bull. Herb. Boiss. VII, App. II, p. 274 . 
Description : — A small shrub, about feet high, prostrate at the base, 
forming extensive bushes, glabrous or puberulous in the upper parts when 
examined under the magnifying glass, biennial or perennial ; internodes 
of old stems very long, | — If inches long ; branches prostrate, divaricate, 
terete, striate; stipules 2 pairs of slender thorns, often unequal, short, 
measuring up to | inch in the lower parts and almost invisible in the 
uppermost. Leaves unifoliate, elongate, elliptic-acute, short-petioled on 
the young lateral branches and inch long and f- inch broad ; on the 
upper young branches linear, inch long. 
Flowers axillary, very small, shorter than the pedicels. Sepals 
triangular-lanceolate, papillose, mucronate, half as long as the corolla. 
Petals pale rose-coloured. Capsule globose-turbinate, hirsute, usually as 
