A plant from the Cape of Good Hope, long known in our 
gteen-houses; and more interesting, from the singularity 
of its appearance, structure, and colour of the blossom, than 
in point of ornament. 
The species is a milky suffrutescent slender twining 
evergreen, covered with a short close hoary pubescence; 
stems. several, filiform, elastic, and tough, from one to 
three feet high, more. roughly pubescent. than the fo- 
liage, winding one round the other in.a wreath when 
no support is by. Leaves in distant pairs, oblong-ovate 
and; subcordate, short-pointed, under an inch in length, 
and rather. above the half of one in breadth, villous 
on both sides; petioles perfoliate, short, firm. Peduncles 
dateral, alternate, solitary, few, about the length of the 
Jeaves, terminated by a short closish corymb of from about 
_ §-12 small upright sweet-scented brown and white blossoms. 
‘Calyx very small, 5-cleft, pointed, patent, persistent. Co- 
‘rolla of a faded liver-colour, of one piece, 5-parted, stellate, 
segments widely separated, narrow, linear, twisted, obtuse; 
stamineous crown a white narrow campanulate pentagonal 
tube, notched at the brim, of the same height as the column 
of fructification, to the angles of which it is cemented at 
the base, and the whole of which it encloses and guards, in 
the way of the popes or glass bells, in use to prevent candles 
from flaring. £/aments united cylindrically : anthers ter- 
‘minated by a pointed membrane. Germens 2, halved-ovate 
lengthways; styles 2 subulate; stigma common to both, 
Jarge pentagonal, bifid at the apex; furnished at each angele 
of the 5 faces with a corpuscle and two filiform processes, 
each suspending from its apex a small ventricose yellow 
pollen-mass, separately attracted from a loculament of dif- 
ferent bilocular anthers. , 
_ The species contained in the Linnean Cynancuum have 
been considerably reduced by Mr. Brown in his late ar- 
rangement of his order of Asclepiadee. But even under this 
reduction he thinks it still resolvable into six separate ge- 
nera, the characters of which he has marked out in the form 
of six heads of as many sections. | 
Cultivated by Miller in 1726. ' 
- The drawing was made at the nursery of Messrs, Whit- 
ley, Brames, and Milne, King’s Road, Fulham. ~ . 
a The calyx. 6 A detached flower. ¢ The column of fructification, 
entire. 
