544 Eivart and White : 



Mesemrryanthemum bicorne, Sond. (.1/. mirranthum, E. and F.V 



Moorna, Lower Murray River, 1887, N.S.W. ; banks of the 

 Murray, Vict., J. P. Eckert, 1892. 

 Introduced, but hardly naturalised. 



Mesembryanthemum saumentosum, Haw. 



This is given in the Kew Index as from S. Africa and Aus- 

 tralia. The latter is incorrect, and is apparently given on the 

 authority of a single old but undated specimen from " Dr. F. 

 M. Mueller," marked Australia Felix, but with no other locality. 

 It is evidently a fragment taken from a garden. The plant is 

 not a native of Australia, nor is it even a naturalised alien. 



Mesembryanthemum tegens. F. v. M. 



This species, described in the Fragmenta, V., 157, as from low 

 meadows near Melbourne, is retained as valid in the Kew 

 Index as an Australian sjDecies, and at the Botanical Gardens, 

 Melbourne, but was dropped in the Census, without any refer- 

 ence or reason being given. I was unable, however, to find any 

 species with which it agreed from S. Africa or elsewhere. 

 On reference to Kew, Mr. N. E. Brown reports as follows : — 



■' It would appear that the name M. tegens must stand for 

 the plant sent. It is evidently nearly allied to M. clavellatum, 

 Haw. (which is quite distinct from M. australe, Forst., with 

 which Bentham united it), but that species has clavate, obtuse- 

 angled leaves and larger, bright violet-purple flowers. From the 

 South African M. filicaule, Haw., M., i-eptans. Ait., and M. 

 crassifolium, Linn.,, it is also quite distinct. But there are 

 specimens at Kew of a plant collected by Capt. Wooley Dod on 

 Paardeu Island, near Capetown, in 1897, which seems speci- 

 tically the same as M. tegens. This does not appear to be 

 described in the Flora Capensis, and no previous collector seems 

 to have gathei-ed it, so it is just possible that it has been intro- 

 duced there from Australia. The two, however, require to be 

 compared in the living state to make it quite certain that they 

 ai"e identical." 



