The germen being here completely inferior, affords the 
technical distinction which separates the genus from its 
next coordinates, Trntanpsia and Prrcarrnia, where that is 
either partly or else wholly superior. In Brometta the ger- 
men ripens into a more or less fleshy succulent pericarp, 
which not opening by valves, falls within the definition of a 
berry. In the well-known species Ananas, it is a con- 
creted cluster, or rather spike of these berries (in that 
instance supremely succulent and generally seedless), hori- 
zontally imbedded with the bractes in their common harder 
fleshed peduncle or stalk, the core of the mass, which 
‘compounds the Pine-Apple. In nudicaulis the berries are 
thinner fleshed, scarcely succulent, do not coalesce, and 
are not esculent ; the bloom alone giving a value to the plant 
‘in the garden. ' 
Caudex a short stoloniferous axis. Leaves radical, 
growing much as in the common Pine-Apple plant, con- 
volutely folded and imbricated at the base, where they 
are stained on the inside with purple, divergent, lorately 
lanceolate, cuspidate, smooth, spinously dentate with teeth 
of a burnt-black colour, outer ones largest, from 12 to 15 
inches in length, and little more than three in. breadth. Stem 
simple, about a foot and a half high; upright, of about the 
‘thickness of a finger, very slightly flexuose, covered with a 
white mealy efflorescence, cylindrical, sheathed by large 
single upright scattered imbricating spathelike bractes of a 
‘dull pink colour half stemclasping; membranous, lanceolate 
3-4 inches long, upper ones broadest, closest, quite entire, 
and. enyelopping the lower part of the inflorescence. Spike 
terminal, simple, scattered, cylindrical, imbricately many- 
flowered, upright, half a foot or more in length, bracteless: 
stalk or peduncle mealy white, fleshy, rigid, cut into niches 
to hold the flowers. Flowers upright,, sessile, about two 
~ inches and a half long, scarlet, with a violet-blue stain at” 
‘the end of the segments of the corolla, scentless. Calyx 
nearly of the colour of the corolla, powdered with white 
meal, 3-parted, thick, hard, imbricately tubular, twice 
shorter than the corolla, which it envelops closely, filled with 
a honeyed lymph in the bottom; segments equal, oblong, 
somewhat obtuse. Corolla two inches long, of three petal- 
like segments, placed alternately with those of the calyx at 
‘the base of that, tubularly convoluted, slightly spread above: 
segments subpanduriformly ligulate, acuminate, below the” 
