278 



THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



subject for the top illustration in Plate XLIX. The species is apparently identical 

 with the Northern Fruit-eating Bat, Pteropus conspicillatus. 



What would at first sight appear to be a floral product closely resembling a 

 rose or camelia in size, shape, and structure, is depicted in the accompanying 

 illustration. It is as a matter of fact no flower at all, but a vagary of vegetation 

 induced through the interference of a gall-insect, the plant thus distinguished being 

 the ordinary White Mangrove, Avicennia officinalis. Several of the bushes in the 

 vicinity of the one from which the examples figured were taken, were literally laden 

 with these rosette-shaped galls, one small spray gathered (which was also 

 photographed) bearing as many as twenty of these singular products. The colour of 

 these " gall flowers " approximated to that of the leaves of the tree that bore them. 

 From an aesthetic point of view, they were undoubtedly as worthy of admiration as 

 the green roses which are assiduously cultivated and held in high repute in the gardens 

 of rose specialists. Contemplating these Mangrove " roses " in conjunction with the 

 verdant variety of Rosa hortensis that happens to be flourishing in the writer's garden 

 and thus available for comparison while penning these lines, the mind is exercised 

 with the thought as to whether gall-insects have not had something to do with the 



origin of some of our most 

 highly prized horticultural 

 triumphs. If, in fact, the 

 green rose is the archetype 

 of the exquisite blooms 

 that through high cultiva- 

 tion and under another 

 colour smell so sweet, have 

 we not in this mangrove 

 gall created straightaway 

 the prototype of a floral 

 gem that simply needs 

 bleaching and the addition 



of a drop of scent to produce a buttonhole camelia 

 that would satisfy the most fastidious. 



There is yet another noteworthy point con- 

 cerning this Mangrove vagary. That "big fleas 



have lesser fleas, &c. " is a time-worn truism 



W. SamUt-Kent, Photo. 



ROSF.TTE OALLS OF WHITE MANGROVE. 



