of Jour New-Holland Plants. -oT 



o^ 



I am indebted to the Rev. Mr. Davics, F. L. S. Vicc-M after of 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, for fpccii-nens of this ihrub, which was 

 raifed in the Botanic Garden of the Univerfity by Mr. Donn, from 

 feeds brought from Port Jackfon, and flowered in 1799. It ihoald 

 ftand next to the M.Jiyphdoldes, to which its leaves bear fome rc- 

 femblance ; but they are neither twilled nor pungent, neither have 

 they more than five, or at moft feven ribs; they are alio more in- 

 clined to be oppofite than in that fpecies. The flowers are wliite, 

 encircling the branches in longiih clufters. Calyx-teeth blunt and 

 without nerves, as in mofl: of the other fpecies, and totally unlike 

 the ribbed acuminated teeth oi M.Jlypheloides, Stamina collc61ed to- 

 gether into bundles, but imperfe6lly, and never to any confiderable 

 diftance from heir bafe, fo that it would fcarccly be taken for a Mela- 

 leuca iiW the filaments in decay are found to fall ofi^ (for the mofl 

 part) in cluffcers. The ftigma is fimple, as in Meiro/iJeros. 



The very imperfe6l connexion of the ftamina in this plant leads 

 us to remark how little the diftin6lion between Melaleuca and Metro- 

 Jideros, and confequently even the chara6ler of the Linnean clafs 

 Folyadelphia, arc founded in nature. Moft plants indeed, of that 

 clafs, like moft fpecies of Melaleuca, have the filaments fo ftridly 

 united, for a confiderable part of their length, into feveral (moftly 

 three or five) phalanges or bundles, and thofe bunules fall ofFfo entire, 

 that the chara6ler derived from fuch a circumftance fcems no lefs 

 natural than convenient for the fyftematic botanift. In the Mela- 

 leuca nodofa, on the contrary, the union of the ftamina is continued 

 but a little way from the bafe, and it is even more (light in the plant 

 now before us, many of the filaments being quite fiinple, and uncon- 

 neded with their neighbours. The cafe is the fame in the genus 

 Citrus, of which Linnaeus could not but be aware when he efta- 

 bliftied this clafs, and indeed he alludes to the variablencfs of the 

 chara^^er in his Genera Flantarum in defcribing Citrus, Neither is 



this 



