Plate 183.
Reading edition
GAZANIA SUFFRUTICOSA. S.W. Africa. Compositae. Tribe Arctotideae. Gazania, Gaertn.; Benth. et Hook. f. Gen. Plant, vol. ii. p. 459.
Gazania suffruticosa, Muschler in Engl. Bot. Jahrb. vol. 46, p. 120.
In a collection of succulents received from South-West Africa and planted at the Division of Botany, Pretoria, fruits of this Gazania were evidently mixed with the soil, as a plant grew in the succulent bed. It is a somewhat remarkable species and differs considerably in habit from the two species previously figured on Plates 51 and 64. The whole plant is covered with cobwebby hairs. The leaves are somewhat succulent, extremely brittle, and snap when bent; they are also easily snapped from the branches.
The single specimen in the garden has made vigorous growth and promises to do well under cultivation. It flowered in May of this year.
Description:—A branched herb up to 30 cm. high. Branches cobwebby. Leaves 5·5 to 7·5 cm. long, 1 to 1·5 cm. broad above, obovate-spathulate, narrowed into a petiole, pungent at the apex, irregularly lobed, or toothed, with the lobes and teeth tipped with a short pungent mucro, cobwebby above and beneath. Flower-heads in the axils of the leaves. Peduncles slightly longer, as long as or shorter than the leaves with tufts of cobwebby hairs. Involucre 1·8 cm. long, 6 mm. in diameter below, the concrete portion oblong in outline, inflexed at the base, sparsely cobwebby; outermost lobes 2·5 to 4 mm. long, ovate, acute; inner lobes 1 cm. long, ovate, acuminate, acute, with membranous margin. Ray-florets neuter; tube 9 mm. long, somewhat compressed; limb 1·6 cm. long, 7 mm. broad, obovate-elliptic, yellow, with a black eye-spot. Disc-florets: tube 7 mm. long, cylindric; lobes 1·5 mm. long, oblong, shortly acuminate, subobtuse. Anthers minutely sagittate at the base. Ovary very villous; style-branches linear, obtuse. Pappus of many delicate very narrow scales 5 mm. long.
Plate 183.—Fig. 1, involucre; Fig. 2, longitudinal section through involucre; Fig. 3, ray-floret; Fig. 4, disc-floret.
F.P.S.A., 1925.
