SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 
VOL. 72 
cure additional material. In the latter part of December, 1920, Mr. 
Pilkington returned to New York and brought with him two large 
boxes of plants, containing two sections of the trunk, several living 
plants, and fruits of the new genus, as well as specimens of four 
other species, with field notes and photographs. 
NEOABBOTTIA Britt, and Rose, gen. nov. 
A treelike cactus with a smooth upright terete trunk and a much 
branched top, the branches strongly winged or ribbed, normally from 
the distal end of the preceding branch, but sometimes from below the 
tip and usually in the same plane; ribs thin and high, very spiny; 
Fig. 1. Fig. 2. 
Figs, i and 2.— Flower and fruit of Neoabbottia. Natural size. 
flowers nocturnal, small, tubular with a narrow limb, borne several 
togethei at the distal end of a terminal branch from a small felted 
cephalium, perianth pei sisting on the ovary * perianth-tube and ovary 
bearing small scales with short wool and an occasional bristle in their 
axils; perianth-segments very small; throat of flower a little broad¬ 
ened at the top, bearing many stamens; style slender; fruit oblong, 
turgid, nearly naked, deeply umbilicate; seeds minute, black, 
muricate. 
A monotypic genus of Hispaniola, dedicated to Dr. W. L. Abbott, 
a patron of natural history. 
1 ype species, Cactus paniculatus Lam. 
NO. 9 NEOABBOTTIA, A NEW CACTUS GENUS - BRITTON AND ROSE 3 
NEOABBOTTIA PANICULATA (Lam.) Britt, and Rose 
Cactus paniculatus Lam. Encyl. 1: 540. 1783. 
Cereus paniculatus DC. Prodr. 3: 466. 1828. 
Six to ten meters high or even higher; trunk woody, 30 cm. in 
diameter, the wood close-grained, yellowish white; bark of the trunk 
1.5 cm. thick, brown, not spiny in age, smooth; branches 4 to 6 cm 
broad, strongly 4-ribbed, rarely 5-ribbed, occasionally 6-ribbed or 
winged; ribs thin, 1.5 to 2.5 cm. high, their margins somewhat 
crenate, the areoles borne at the base of the sinuses, 1.5 to 2 cm. 
apart; spines 12 to 20, acicular, brownish to gray, 2 cm. long or less; 
cephalium 1 to 1.5 cm. in diameter, becoming elongated and angled; 
flowers straight, 5 cm. long, with a limb about 3 cm. broad; tube 6 
to 7 mm. long, about 18 mm. in diameter, with walls 5 to 6 mm. 
thick; inner perianth segments greenish white, short-oblong, about 
1 cm. long, obtuse; throat 18 mm. long, covered with numerous 
filaments, these with a knee near the base and pressing against the 
style; stamens and style included; ovary and flower tube tubercled, 
the former with short tubercles, the latter with oblong ones (some¬ 
times 1.5 cm. long), each ending in a depressed areole subtended by 
a minute scale; areoles bearing a tuft of brown felt and an occa¬ 
sional brown bristle; fruit oblong in outline, 6 to 7 cm. long, 4 to 5.3 
cm. in diameter, turgid, nearly naked; rind green, thick, hard; seeds 
rounded above, cuneate at base, with a large lateral depressed hilum. 
Collected near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on the Cul-de-sac by Dr. 
W. L. Abbott and Mr. E. C. Leonard, April, 1920 (no. 3500) ; also 
at the same locality by Mr. H. M. Pilkington, December, 1920: also 
a single branch by Dr. Paul Bartsch at Thomazeau in 1917 (no. 
221). Here doubtless belongs W. Buch’s specimen, described in a 
note under Cereus paniculatus by Dr. I. Urban in his Flora Domin- 
gensis. 1 
This plant was described by Plunder 2 as follows: Melocactus 
arborescens, tetragonus, flore ex albido. This description was re¬ 
peated by Tournefort, 3 with the addition of a single word, in 1719. 
PlumieFs drawing of this plant was published long after his death 
by Burmann as plate 192 of the Plantarum Americanum and upon 
this plate Lamarck based his Cactus paniculatus , which De Candolle 
1 Symbolae Antillanae seu Fundamenta Florae Indiae Occidentalis, 8: 462. 1920. 
3 Catalogus Plantarum Americanum, 19. 1703- 
3 Histoire des Plantes, 1: 653. 1719- 
