Asclepiadaceae. Tribe Stapelieae.
Diplocyatha, N. E. Br. in Journ. Linn. Soc. vol. xvii. p. 168, t. 12,
figs. 1 to 3.
Diplocyatha ciliata, N. E. Br. l.c.; Fl. Cap. vol. iv. sect. i. p. 923.
When Mr. Brown first described this remarkable genus in 1880, he only knew of Masson’s and Thunberg’s specimens, and up to the time of the account in the Flora Capensis (1909) Dr. Marloth was the only recent collector who had found the plant. Mrs. D. van der Bijl, of Abraham’s Kraal, in the Beaufort West District, who has contributed several interesting plants we have figured, sent us specimens in 1919, which flowered at the Division of Botany, Pretoria, this year.
It was figured in a coloured plate by Masson in 1796, and our present Plate is the first to be produced since then. A pencil drawing of a portion of the flower, the corona and the pollinia, accompanied Brown’s original description, and while our specimen differs in some minor points from the drawings, we have no hesitation in referring it to the same species. The flower is rather handsome, and devoid of the objectionable smell usually associated with the members of the tribe Stapelieae.
Description:—Stems decumbent and ascending, 4 to 6·5 cm. long, 1·5 to 2 cm. thick excluding the teeth, obtusely 4-angled, with stout conical acute teeth 4 to 6 mm. long, glabrous, green, mottled with purple. Flowers subsolitary from near the base or middle of the stems; pedicels 1 to 2 cm. long, erect, glabrous. Sepals about 6 mm. long, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, acute, glabrous. Corolla about 7·5 cm. in diameter, smooth and glabrous outside, densely papillate-rugose on the inner face, according to Thunberg and Masson, greyish, with the tips of the papillae reddish, but according[{72}] to Masson’s figure, pale yellowish with a greyish ring around the mouth of the tube, minutely dotted with red; tube campanulate, apparently slightly raised at its mouth around the very thick recurved papillate-rugose rim of the inner tube, which is densely covered with stiff purple hairs at the base around and under the corona; lobes about 2·5 cm. long, 1·5 to 2 cm. broad, spreading, ovate, acute, ciliate from base to apex with clavate vibratile white hairs; outer corona-lobes arising above the base of the staminal column, connate at the base, somewhat spreading, with the free 2/3 to 1·5 mm. long, 2 mm. broad, transverse or subquadrate, very obtusely or subacutely bifid, glabrous, apparently yellowish dotted with purple-brown; inner corona-lobes incumbent on the backs of the anthers, about 1·5 mm. long, thick, ovate, acute, or acuminate with the tips produced into a very short erect point, apparently yellowish, dotted and marked with purple-brown. (Flora Capensis; National Herb. Pretoria, No. 2841.)
Plate 137.—Fig. 1, median longitudinal section of the flower with corona removed; Fig. 2, sepals; Fig. 3, corona; Fig. 4, pollinia; Fig. 5, inner corona lobe showing pollen-sac; Fig. 6, cross-section of stem.