163 



DESCRIPTIVE NOTES ON A NEW VACCINIUM 

 mOM SAMOA. 



By Baron Ferd. von MueUer, C.M.G., M.D., F.R.S. 



Among a number of Saraoan plants placed for elucida- 

 tion at my disposal by the Rev. S. T. Whitmee, M.A., 

 F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., occurs a whortleberry-bush^ the 

 first member of the order of Vacciniere, as yet known 

 from that Group. The Royal Society of Tasmania has 

 favoured me on former occasions by promulgating notes on 

 plants not always Tasmanian, and, perhaps, this privilege 

 will be continued at this and future opportunities to render 

 known remarkable undescribed plants through the pages of 

 its publications, while this advantage will be all the more 

 appreciated, inasmuch as the praiseworthy regularity and 

 punctuality with which the Tasmanian Society issues its 

 papers, affords the most favourable vehicle in Australia for 

 the early record of new observations. Passingly, it 

 may here be observed, that some of the plants of Mr. 

 "Whitmee's collections, which latter were formed at great 

 risk, toil, and expense of the reverend gentleman, amidst 

 the arduous duties of his ecclesiastical position, have been 

 alluded to in an appendix to Mr. F. Campbell's work on the 

 New Hebrides, and in a recent publication on Papuan 

 plants from Sir William MacArthur's sendings. 



Melbourne, December, 1875. 



VACCINIUM WHITMEEI. 



(Sect. Epigynium.) 



Erect, evergreen ; branchlets slightly downy, all other parts 

 glabrous ; leaves oval, contracted into a very short petiole, blunt 

 at the summit, entirely Trithout teeth ; peduncles axillary, solitary, 

 one flowered, recurved ; bracts very early deciduous ; tube of the 

 calyx depressed-hemispheric, several times broader than long ; teeth 

 of the calyx five, rarely six, deltoid ; tube of the corolla ovate- 

 cylindrical, lobes slightly spreading, rhomboid semi-ovate, several 

 times shorter than the tube ; anthers somewhat shorter than the 

 filaments, oblong, at the apex very slightly bilobed, neither con- 

 spicuously attenuated, nor spurred, nor at the base incurved ; style 

 stout, shorter than the corolla ; berry much broader than long ; 

 embryo more than half as long as the albumen, black. 



On the higher mountains of the Samoa Islands : Leaves coriaceous, 

 jin. lin. hmg, penniveined and slightly reticulated, almost flat, 

 not dotted ; peduncles Jin. iin. long; teeth of the calyx in age 



