160 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW AUSTRALIAN PLANTS, WITH 



OCCASIONAL OTHER ANNOTATIONS ; 

 By Baron von Mueller, K.C.M.G., M. & Ph.D.,LL.D., F.R.S. 



(Continued.) 

 Aristolochia Holtzei. 



Herbaceous, erect, dwarf, nearly glabrous ; leaves compara- 

 tively long, almost sessile, laxe, linear, much narrowed towards 

 the upper end ; flowers axillary, solitary, mostly on a rather long 

 stalklet ; basal portion of the calyx obliquely ovate-globular, 

 thence the tube slender, and about half as long and wide as the 

 broad-linear upwards narrowed flat termination ; fruit almost 

 globular, rather small, prominently filiform-streaked ; seeds 

 deltoid-cordate. 



Near Port Darwin ; N. Holtze. 



Closely allied to A. Tozetii, but all the leaves lobeless and 

 sessile, the pedicels elongated, the flat part of the corolla occupy- 

 ing a proportionately greater length, and the constricted portion 

 more slender. 



A. Tozetii seems to be entirely an eastern species, A. Holtzei 

 only a north-western. 

 Cymodocea zosteri folia. 



Of this plant several specimens with pistillate flowers were 

 recently received from J. Bracebridge Wilson Esq., M.A., F.L.S., 

 to whom the writer had recommended the search for floral organs 

 during that gentleman's zealous algologic excursions. I now find 

 the style of each of the two fruitlets terminating in from 3 to 6 

 setulaceous rather long stigmas. The female flowers had only 

 once before been obtained, then in a fruit-bearing state, and were 

 thus described in the " Fragm. Phytogr. Austral." ix, 196 (1875). 

 The staminate flowers are as yet only known from Gaudichaud's 

 " Botanique " of Freycinet's "Voyage Autour du Monde," 340 t. 

 40 (1826). That these minute organs have hitherto eluded obser- 

 vation so much, is explained by their bein^ concealed within the 

 axils of leaves, and clasped by the longitudinal-incurved petioles. 

 In adopting the above given specific name already in the first 

 "Census of Austral. Plants" 121, ten years ago, as transferred 

 from Agardh's Amphibolis zosterifolia, and in discarding the 

 specific designation antarctica, given by Labillardiere to this 

 oceanic monocotyledonous plant of our warm temperate zone, it 

 was desired, to discontinue the erroneous notion, conveyed by the 

 original name ; because we might just as well call any lowlands 

 plant peculiar to the remotest part of South-Europe an arctic one. 

 Cymodocea zosterifolia does not grow further south than Tasmania, 

 being there still more than twenty degrees of latitude distant from 

 the antarctic circle ; indeed, the same geographic remark applies 

 to our Dicksonia Billardieri (D. antarctica, Lab. ; Gibotinm 

 Billardieri, Kaulf.), which, though reaching New Zealand, does 

 not even extend to the Auckland- and Campbell-Islands. 



January, 1893. 



