A genus instituted by. Jacquin;..who does not seem 
however to lave been aware that his OrnIrHoGALUM para- 
doxicum belonged: to it.. ‘The group belongs wholly to the 
Cape of Good Hope, and is of great singularity; the foliage, 
especially in paradoxicum and folioliferum, appears, to the 
extent of our botanical knowledge, an anomaly; the flower 
in some respects agrees with that of ALBuca; the seed, from 
the description of Jacquin, with that of Tinuanpsra; and 
the coloured irregular tuber with that of WacHEnporrias. 
‘We have placed it in AspHopELE as others have done, but 
scarcely think that order can be the final destination of the 
genus. 
The species before us has been now first introduced. by 
Messrs. Colvill, of the King’s Road, Chelsea; where it 
flowered last summer in the greenhouse. 
Tuber perennial, large, irregularly rounded gemmiparous 
(bearing eyes or buds), brown without, red within. Leaf up- 
right, roughishly furred, with an ovate acuminate coriaceous 
parallelly nerved lamina, involutely contracted below where 
it narrows into a long pale cylindrical upright fluted 
petiole. Scape a foot high or more, filiform, stiff, green, 
smooth. . Raceme many-flowered, spreading; flowers long- 
stalked, irregularly wideset, whitish with green fillets, not 
much more than : of an inch deep: peduncles slender, elastic, 
and firm, four times longer than the flower or more, assur- 
gent (inclining upwards with a curve), having a small spha- 
celate subulate closepressed bracte at the base. Cor. deeply 
cleft, expanding in two forms, filled at the bottom with a 
honied lymph; 3 outer segments urceolately rotate, converg- 
ing loosely at the lower portion, spreading open recurvedly 
at the upper, oblong taper-pointed folded at the point, 3 inner 
ones converging erectly, obovately cuneate, orbicular at the 
top and erodedly crenulate with a short keel-like plait at the 
back, shortly unguiculate at the bottom. Stamens + shorter 
than the corolla; filaments inserted at the base of the seg- 
ments, equal, upright, ovately taper-pointed, flattish, white, 
crooked inwards at the point; anthers short, twin, divari- 
cately parted at the base, suspended from the middle of the 
back, upright: pollen yellow. Pistil rather longer than the 
stamens: germen green, smooth, conical, placed upon the 
thick disk of the corolla, obtusely 3-cornered with fluted 
angles; cells many-seeded at the lower part, empty above; 
ovules in two ranks, obversely oblong, ascending: style 
