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XX. On Jansonia, a new Genus of Legutninosae, from Western Australia. 

 By Mr. Richard Kippist, Lihr. L.S. Sgc. S^c. 



Read May 4th, 1847. 



H.AVING recently been engaged in the examination of an interesting col- 

 lection of plants formed by the late Mr. Gilbert in Western Australia, and 

 kindly forwarded to me by Mr. Saunders for determination, and the selection 

 of a set for the Society's herbarium, I have had the satisfaction of finding 

 among them one which, as it appears to me, cannot with propriety be referred 

 to any existing genus ; and I venture to hope that a short account of it may 

 not be thought wholly unworthy the attention of the Linnean Society, whose 

 Transactions have so greatly contributed towards elucidating the Australian 

 Flora, of all others perhaps the most interesting from the number of singular 

 and anomalous forms which it includes. 



The plant which I now propose to describe belongs to the Papilionaceous 

 subdivision of Leguminosce, and is remarkable for its deviation from the pre- 

 vailing structure of the floral envelopes in that order, more especially of the 

 petals, the proportions which these commonly bear to each other being here 

 exactly reversed ; the vexillum, for example, which in a Papilionaceous flower 

 of the more usual type exceeds both keel and wings in size, is here so exceed- 

 ingly minute, as, in a cursory glance, almost to escape observation ; while the 

 keel, usually shorter than the wings, here far exceeds them in length. The 

 ordinary proportions of the calyx are in like manner reversed ; the upper lip, 

 generally the largest where any diff^erence of size exists, being scarcely one- 

 fourth as long as the lower, whose intermediate segment extends beyond the 

 lateral ones, while the upper lip is cleft nearly to the base, still further in- 

 creasing the apparent obliquity. The stamens likewise participate in this 

 irregularity, the anterior filaments being considerably longer than the poste- 



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