Mutisia subulata Ruiz & Pavon

An evergreen, slender-stemmed climber reported by collectors as growing 6 to 10 ft high; young shoots grey, ribbed, much zigzagged. Leaves glabrous, linear, 1 to 3 in. long 1⁄16 in. or so wide, grey-green, grooved above, the midrib prominent beneath and often prolonged at the apex into a curling tendril. Flower-heads with some eight or ten ray-florets of an orange-scarlet colour, each floret of lanceolate shape, 11⁄2 in. long by 1⁄4 in. wide. Involucre cylindrical, 11⁄2 in. long by 1⁄2 in. wide; scales overlapping, 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in. wide, broadly ovate, tipped with down. Bot. Mag., t. 9461.

Native of Chile; originally named in 1798 and collected in the wild many times since, but not introduced apparently until 1928, when seeds reached Britain through the agency of G. W. Robinson and the late Clarence Elliott; a living plant brought home by the former flowered in 1930. It is very distinct from the species previously mentioned in its stems which are scarcely thicker than an ordinary strand of worsted. Like other species, it should be planted to grow over a bush or small tree, on which it should eventually form a mass of interlaced branches and flower about midsummer. It is of doubtful hardiness, but would, no doubt, find the south-western counties warm enough.