This Plant, when young and springing up, does much resemble a Housleek, having thick leaves, almost like that, and seems to be somwhat of kin to it in other particulars; also from the top of the leaves, there shoots out a small white and transparent hair, or thorn:  This stem, in time, come to shoot out into a long, round and even stalk, which by cutting transversly, when dry, I manifestly found to be a stiff, hard, and hollow Cane, or Reed, without any kind of knot, or stop, from its bottom, where the leaves encompass’d it, to the top, on which there grows a large seed case, A, cover’d with a thin, and more whitish skin, B, terminated in a long thorny top, which at first covers all the Case, and by degrees, as that swells, the skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr’d button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls:  For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward after the same manner as the ears of Wheat and Barley usually do; and opening several of these dry red Cases, F, I found them to be quite hollow, without anything at all in them; whereas when I cut them asunder with a sharp Pen-knife when green, I found in the middle of this great Case, another smaller round Case, between which two, the interstices were fill’d with multitudes of stringie fibres, which seem’d to suspend the lesser Case in the middle of the other, which (as farr as I was able to discern) seem’d full of exceeding small white seeds, much like the seed-bagg in the knop of a Carnation, after the flowers have been two or three days, or a week, fallen off; but this I could not so perfectly discern, and therefore cannot positively affirm it.

After the seed was fallen away, I found both the Case, Stalk, and Plant, all grow red and wither, and from other parts of the root continually to spring new branches or slips, which by degrees increased, and grew as bigg as the former, seeded, ripen’d, shatter’d, and wither’d.

I could not find that it observ’d any particular seasons for these several kinds of growth, but rather found it to be springing, mature, ripe, seedy, and wither’d at all times of the year; But I found it most to flourish and increase in warm and moist weather.

It gathers its nourishments, for the most part, out of some Lapidescent, or other substance corrupted or chang’d from its former texture, or substantial form; for I have found it to grow on the rotten parts of Stone, of Bricks, of Wood, of Bones, of Leather, &c.

It oft grows on the barks of several Trees, spreading it self, sometimes from the ground upwards, and sometimes from some chink or cleft of the bark of the Tree, which has some putrify’d substance in it, but this seems of a distinct kind from that which I observ’d to grow on putrify’d inanimate bodies, and rotten earth.