290 NOTES ON PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO SYDNEY, 



high ; and bearing a profusion of white flowers, which, at a distance 

 have the appearance of almond or apple blossoms. It is the large 

 variety of Leptosiiermum flavescens. The genus Leptospermum 

 belongs to Myrtacea ; perhaps our most valuable order. Dr. 

 Woolls has enumerated eight species indigenous in the County of 

 Cumberland ; but the genus extends from Victoria and Tasmania 

 on the south to Port Denison on the north. In the immediate 

 neighbourhood of Sydney, however, I have most frequently met 

 with L. flavescens and its numerous varieties, and L. attenuatum. 

 The former seeking comparatively dry and stony localities, while 

 the latter rejoices in the margins of creeks, with its roots almost in 

 water. Like the Lobelias, the species of this genus are exceed- 

 ingly difficult to identify. Bentham, in referring to this difficulty, 

 says, " The whole of those with five celled ovaries, different as 

 some of them appear at first sight, pass so gradually, the one into the 

 other, that they might readily be admitted as varieties of one 

 species." Of L. flavescens, he adds, that "It is scarcely to be 

 distinguished from L. lanigerum, except by the absence of hairs or 

 down," and that " the extreme forms of either one or the other, 

 are so dissimilar, that it requires the examination of a large 

 number of specimens to believe in their specific identity.'' My 

 attention was first directed, in a special way, to this genus, by the 

 apparent absence in many otherwise perfect flowers, of the style 

 and stigma, especially was this the case in L. attenuatum. Knowing 

 that the genus was neither monoecious or dioecious ; I was certainly 

 astonished to find many flowers with stamens only, until, after a 

 more careful examination, I found that in several the style and 

 stigma had, from some cause, withered as soon as formed, and 

 appeared only as a small black spec (as though scorched) on the 

 top of the ovary. In other flowers, although the stamens and 

 anthers were fully formed ; the stigma, still healthy, was but a mere 

 speck sessile on the ovary. The stamens, of which there are about 

 thirty in each flower in this genus, being so curved inwards, that 

 the anthers were immediately over the stigma. In other flowers, I 

 found the style and stigma in so many different stages, and the 

 relative positions of the stamens and pistils so different as they 



