THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



that was photographed in full leaf at the time when the great majority of its 

 companions exhibited only bare poles. 



The aspect of the handsome, dark, glossy palmate leaves of the Baobab are 

 clearly indicated in the photograph of a full-foliaged tree reproduced in Chapter I., 

 Plate V. The flowers are also notable in size and appearance. They are of a 

 creamy white hue, and somewhat thick waxy consistence, five-petalled with a slightly 

 prolonged tubular calyx, an elongate pistil, and a surrounding sheaf of fine long 

 stalked stamens and golden anthers, resembling those of the ordinary Myrtacese. 

 At the time of the writer's visits to the North West, the flowering season for the 

 Baobab trees had long since passed. By dint, however, of carefully scouring the country 

 round, one solitary bloom was, with the kindly assistance of Dr. Ernest Black, 

 ultimately secured. A pencil sketch made of it is reproduced below. 



The large ovate fruits or nuts of the Boab tree may be observed scattered among 

 the branches of many of the examples figured, but are especially conspicuous in the 

 one that forms the subject of the illustration on the next page. A characteristic 

 representation of a single nut, illustrating the more normal bluntly ovate contour, is 

 also afforded by the engraved example included with the carved shell ornaments 

 reproduced on page 10 of Chapter I. This figure delineates the nut on a scale of 



one-fifth of its natural size. 

 Boab nuts are found, how- 

 ever, to differ to a remark- 

 able degree both in shape 

 and size even on the same 

 tree. Normally they are 

 obtusely ovate, five to seven 

 or eight inches long, and 

 covered externally with a 

 thin green felt -like pile. 

 They may vary, however, 

 from the foregoing normal 

 contour in the one direction 

 to an elongate acuminate 

 and in the other to an al- 

 most spheroidal contour, 



W. SaviUe-fent, del. 

 FLOWEBS OF BAOBAB TREE, Adartsonia rupestrii. HALF NATURAL SIZE. While the matured nutS may 



