test nigricante, polline aurantiaco. Stig. lineari-oblonga, connatis filamentis 
coarctato-erecta, istis discretis divaricata, lurido-purpurea, labio interiori 
segmentis aciminatis, exteriori breviori concolori plano. 
a 
Excepting Morza Sisyrinchium, the roots or bulb-tubers 
of which are known by the name of Spanish nuts, and are 
esculent, the whole of this beautiful and numerous genus, as 
far as we are acquainted with it, belongs to South Africa. 
We say this under the impression that the species which 
have been tanked under Moraa in Mr. Kunth’s edition of 
‘Huinboldt and Bonpland’s Flora of South America, will be 
found, when inspected in the living plant, not to be genuine 
congeners of it. We have elsewhere observed, that the 
only constant mark between this genus and Inis, exists in 
the nature of the root, which is here a bulb-tuber, but never 
such in Ints. A distinction, which as it constantly induces 
a concomitant variation in the general habit of the plants, 
is as usefully available as one found in some other part of 
greater technical privilege. 
_ The present is an unrecorded species, and has been lately 
introduced from the Cape by Mr. Griffin, with whom it 
flowered at South Lambeth in June last. No vegetable 
group displays a greater variety of beautiful and_ brilliant 
hues than this gents. The tint of the present flower, though 
sombte; is singular and of a richness in the living flower 
that cannot be adequately rendered, by any means within 
the reach of a work of this nature. Its nearest congeners 
are fricuspis, tenuis, and tristis; but it differs from the 
two first in having the inner alternate segments of the 
corolla undivided, and from the latter in having the same 
several times smaller than the outer ones. 
About a span high or rather more, upright. Stem 
simple, very slender, not much more than thrice the thick- 
ness of a hair, elastic, straight, two or three jointed, with 
about three leaves. Leaves grassy, linear, smooth, lower- 
most one sheathing at the lower part, upwards convolutely 
flat, about two lines broad, streakletted, tapered towards 
the top, two others short, sheathing, distant. Spathe one- 
flowered, fusiform or spindle-shaped, about two inches long, 
green, awhedly acuminate, the valves rolled one within the 
other. Peduncle about equal to the spathé. Germen ob- 
long, green, prism-shaped with obtuse corners, three or 
