The species is native of the Cape of Good Hope, and 
was cultivated at Chelsea in 1731; but had been known 10 
Holland as far back as 1698. At present a very rare plant 
in our collections. ‘The specimen from which the drawing 
was made grew in the greenhouse of the Comtesse de 
Vandes at Bayswater, and was produced from imported 
seed. 
Perennial. Rooéstock rising into a short thickly leaved 
branching stem (caudex). Leaves very narrow, linear, not 
very unlike those of the Crocus, in Vaillant’s view, like - 
those of the Cushion Pink, roughly villous, ciliated, en-— 
tire or sometimes with the margin broken by a few distant 
short teeth, tapered downwards, keeled underneath by 4 
thick prominent midrib, stemclasping, broader and chan- 
nelled at the lower part, those of the stem numerous, 
set round at all points, imbricately crowded below, about 
3 inches long, those of the flowerstalks scattered loosely 
and growing gradually shorter. Flowerstalks continuously 
terminal of the arms of the stem, often reclined, from 0 
inches to a foot long, one-flowered, roughly pubescent, 
angularly round, leafless to a great distance below the 
flower, dark green. Calyx herbaceous, roughly pubescent, 
leaflets lanceolately linear sides membranous. Corolla 
about an inch and a half in diameter; disk blackish; ray 
white on the inside and purple at the foot, on the outside 0 
a purplish tawny brown: florets of the ray twice the length 
_of the calyx, marked with 4 dark lines at their backs, tri- 
denticulate, with a short purple glandularly wooled tube: 
florets of the disk subpubescent, segments of the limD 
pointed and black-topped: anthers with 5 blackish mem- 
branous points: pollen orange-yellow: stigmas clavately ob- 
tuse, black: germens of the ray oboyately oblong, trigonal, 
rough: of the disk obcordate and flatly compressed. 
