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XXXII. Notice of a Plant which produces perfect . without any apparent 
Action of Pollen. By Mr. Jonn Surrn, A. L. S. 
Read June 18th, 1839. 
THE subject of this notice is a native of Moreton Bay, on the east coast 
of New Holland, and its introduction is due to the late Mr. Allan Cunning- 
ham, who sent three plants to this garden in 1829*. Mr. Cunningham not 
having seen the plant either in flower or fruit, could not determine to what 
order it belonged ; but from its general habit, and from the presence of stipules, 
he described it as a “scrubby Ilex-leaved plant, probably belonging to Urticeæ.” 
Cultivation has not altered its habit, for the plants continue to be irregularly 
branched, rigid, evergreen shrubs, about three feet high, of a harsh aspect, with 
alternate leaves, on a short petiole, which, as well as the young branches, is 
covered with short hairs: the leaves are elliptical, marginate, and furnished 
generally on each side with three acute lobes, each of which, as also the apex, 
is terminated by a short spine (similar to those of some species of ler and 
Berberis) ; and the stipules are small, subulate, and persistent. 
Shortly after their introduction the plants produced female flowers, an ex- 
amination of which proved the genus to be Euphorbiaceous, and allied to 
Sapium: but although I have watched them carefully from year to year, I 
have been unsuccessful in detecting anything like male flowers or pollen- 
bearing organs; and I should naturally have passed them over as dicecious, 
and considered the three introduced individuals as females, had not my 
attention been particularly directed to them in consequence of each of them 
producing fruit and perfect seeds, from which I succeeded in raising young 
plants. This, too, was not the result of one year, but of several successive 
years' sowing: the plant now exhibited to the Society was raised last year, 
* Mr. Brown informs me that he collected specimens of this plant, but equally without fructifica- 
tion, at Keppel Bay, on the same coast, in 1802. 
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