Aug.,"! Kelly, Plant Distribution in the Healesville District. <;7 



igi4 J ' J/ 



spring from suckers and fractures — trees that, when older, are 

 umbrageous, whose mature leaves are leathery, somewhat 

 lanceolar, and whose branches put out at the tips new leaves, 

 soft, narrow, and beautifully coloured with tints of blue and 

 purple — Eucalyptus Stuartiana of that type gradually dis- 

 appears and is lost at Christmas Hills and at Lilydale, where 

 the railway turns to the Yarra flats ; the species is picked up 

 again, not recognizable at a glance, on the rising ground near 

 Healesville. Only an occasional glaucous leaf or bunch of 

 leaves betrays it. The foliage is more of the viminalis type, 

 the seed-cases fewer, the bark cleaner, the wood softer, and 

 cutting (in the saphng stage) hke cheese. A connecting hnk 

 is found in the elfin forms on the Chum Creek slopes. Here 

 dwarf, gnarled, crooked trees show the external features of 

 bark, leaves, and fruit, and the gradual variation can be traced 

 in from the foot of Toolangi Hill, where it may be confused 

 with E. dives, to similar heights around Healesville, branching 

 out to Myers' Creek and over to the Coranderrk and Don roads, 

 and penetrating in wedge-shaped distribution to the foot of 

 Mount Riddell, but never ascending to greater heights than 

 about 600 feet. If you take a branch of one of the trees in the 

 Healesville area and place it alongside one taken at Croydon, 

 it is hard to believe they belong to the one species ; but, by 

 placing side by side pieces gathered over the tract described, 

 the links are obvious and the identity undoubted. This varia- 

 tion all occurs within a direct line of 20 miles. The Croydon 

 type is thickly fruited even on small bushes. On the Heales- 

 ville form it is sometimes difficult to find one fruit except on 

 old trees. The Chum Creek link is fruited and leaved midway 

 between the two descriptions. 



The narrow-leaved Peppermint Gum, Eucalyptus amygdalina, 

 is plentiful and evenly distributed within and without the area ; 

 within it varies considerably — from the broad-leaved type to 

 the " variety niicrophylla." In the former the leaves are 

 broad, the fruits sparsely clustered, and the bark cleaner in 

 colour. In the latter the bark is dark, the leaves very narrow, 

 and the fruit in thick, fan-like clusters. These two forms are 

 shrubby, and locally known as white and black peppermint. 

 The latter features are those of the intermediate or normal 

 type — a compromise between the two extremes. This median 

 form ascends to the highest ranges, and grows there as a very 

 tall timber tree side by side with E. regnans, another species 

 from which it is so distinct that one cannot conceive that the 

 late Baron von Mueller, when he called both of them E. 

 amygdalina, could ever have seen them growing in company, 

 but identified them by herbarium specimens only. He must 

 have got a shock when he saw what he had done, both with his 



