44 



►ON SOME INTEODUCED PLANTS OF AUSTEALIA 

 AND TASMANIA. 



By the Eev. J. E. Tenison- Woods, F.G.S., F.L.S., Hon. 

 Mem. Eoy. Soc. Tasmania, and President of the Linnean 

 Society of N. S. Wales. 



[Bead ISth Sei^temher, 1880.] 



A good deal of attention lias been devoted to the introduced 

 plants of Australia and Tasmania, and various lists of those 

 introductions have been given in different colonial publi- 

 cations. Dr. Hooker has added a rather extensive catalogue 

 in his introduction to the Flora of Tasmania, and since then 

 the subject has been dealt with by Baron von Mueller, Dr. 

 Woolls, and Mr. F. M. Bailey. But while these essays have 

 given complete lists, and thus serve as records for distinguish- 

 ing hereafter what is indigenous to the country, and what is 

 not, none have especially dealt with the peculiar and abundant 

 spread of some plants in certain localities, and not in others. 

 This is what I propose to consider in the paper which I offer 

 to the Society. 



Any one who travels much in Australia will be struck by 

 the prevalence of plants, which are called weeds, in some 

 districts. Some of these have a very wide range, and 

 wherever they are found are most abundant. They seem to 

 grow and flourish under the most adverse and different con- 

 ditions. Others, though equally abundant where they grow, 

 are limited in their range. Now this varies in a remarkable 

 manner for different parts of Australia and Tasmania. What 

 is a weed in one place is not known, or hardly known, 

 ■elsewhere. In Adelaide it is one plant, and in Queensland 

 another. No particular order is especially singled out, 

 though, perhaps, the Compositce are the best represented, and 

 no particular soil seems to be excluded. There are weeds for 

 the sandy, poor, and dry soils, as well as the rich and humid 

 ones. I intend entirely to confine this paper to those plants 

 which have become noxious weeds, that is to say, plants 

 which grow so very abundantly they injure the land by 

 •excluding every other kind of vegetation. Other introduced 

 plants will not demand any attention in this paper, and I do 

 not propose to give even a list of them. 



The first and most remarkable instance is Cryptostem'ma 

 calendulaceum, Schl. This may be said to be the bane of South 

 Australian pastures. In the neighbourhood of Adelaide it is 

 found everywhere. In the early part of spring its flowers 



