THE BOTANY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 119 
feet high, bearing numerous corymbs of large lilac flowers : the sepals 
are broad and very short, without cilia; the style bearded, and young 
plants of this fine shrub, about five or six feet high, often appear to 
have corymbs of flowers four or six feet in diameter, but these corymbs 
are produced by several branches. 
A very beautiful Chamelaucium is found on both sides of the road 
on the border of the sand-plain, about half a mile to the south of the 
Colbourn springs; it grows about two feet high, bearing its flowers in 
round head-like corymbs ; the flowers are about the size of those of 
Verticordia insignis ; they are white when they first come out, becoming 
rose-coloured with age; the calyx and all the leaves of the plant are 
strongly ciliated. I met with a curious little plant of this Order, 
either a species of Chamelaucium or a new genus nearly allied thereto ; 
it grows about eighteen inches high, and is a slender shrub with small 
heart-shaped leaves; the corolla is lengthened into a sort of tube, like 
an Epacrideous plant. 
The splendid genus Verticordia produces several fine new species. 
The large scarlet Verticordia, which I call V. grandis, first appears on 
the sand-plains to the east of the Hill River; but it is seen in the 
greatest perfection on the sand-plain to the north of the spring called 
by Mrs. Brown the “ Diamond in the Desert ;” it grows to be about 
five or six feet high, with glaucous, round, and rather fleshy leaves, 
about half an inch in diameter; the flowers are seen in their greatest 
beauty the second or third year after the plants have been burned 
down; it is then from two to three feet high, throwing up many stems 
from the same root, and one mass of scarlet flowers ; the principal 
branches are covered for more than a foot of their length, and these 
throw out many smaller shoots, which are also covered with flowers. 
I found another species of Verticordia with leaves in shape and size 
like the 7. grandis, but thinner in substance. The whole plant, al-- 
though growing to the same height, is of very slender habit, and is - 
found thinly scattered over the great sand-plain between the Hutt and 
the Murchison ; the flowers are of a lilac colour, and appear to have 
five blood-red spots in each; these are produced by the undivided part 
of the calyx, which is of a very dark red colour, and is visible through 
the almost transparent corolla. This plant, vai p — that 
is, flourishing in open places, and not injured by r stronger - 
plants, agg con of its numerous slender branches loaded with 
