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Narrow-leaved Poison. This is another variety of Ox\lobiitm 

 parvifionun, reported from the southern districts, from York south- 

 wards ; growing in various kinds of soil it ranges in height from 

 9 inches to 3 or 4, or even 5 feet, and is in flower from September 

 to December or January. Dangerous at all seasons, and very little 

 of it is required to kill any animal. 



Box, sandplain, narrow leaf and marlock poison bushes small 

 to be varieties of the one species of Oxylobium. In the box the 

 leaf is short and very like that of the true box from which presum- 

 ably it has derived its name. In narrow-leaf, on the other hand, 

 the leaves are sometimes to be seen 2 inches in length, and arranged 

 in clusters of 5 to 7 at one level round the branches, instead of being 

 scattered over them. 



BLOOM POISON. 



Oxvlobium rctitsiun. A much-branched, rigid shrub, the young 

 branches angular and hoary or pubscent ; leaves mostly opposite, 

 stalked, ovate or oblong, blunt, square or notched at the end, 

 usually one to two inches long, rigidly coriaceous, hairless and net- 

 veined above, silky or rarely hairless underneath ; flowers reddish- 

 yellow, in dense, almost stalkless, terminal clusters, or rarely also 

 in the angles of the upper leaves ; calyx very hairy, about three or 

 rarely nearly four lines long, divided to about the middle into 

 broadly lance-shaped lobes ; petals about half as long again as the 

 calyx ; pod on a very short stalk, oval, pointed, about four lines 

 long, very hairy ; seeds with an outgrowth near their attach- 

 ment. 



Variety minus. Leaves smaller ; flowers mostly terminal ; calyx 

 less villous. 



Found apparently only in the southern districts, where it grows 

 in poor rocky or gravelly soil, flowering between August and 

 December, and of any height between six inches and six feet. It 

 is by most considered dangerous to stock only when in flower 

 or in pod. 



Two species of plants are set down as corresponding to 

 that popularly known as bloom poison, namely, Oxylobinin rctusitm 

 and Gastrolobium oval (folium ; but from the fact that the former 

 species is recorded in Bentham and Mueller's Flora only from the 

 southern districts of Western Australia, while bloom poison is 

 similarly reported from the same parts, the presumption is that 

 O. n'tiisinn and the bloom poison are the same thing. Besides, 

 Gastrohbiutn oval (folium, at the date of the Flora Australiensis 

 (1864), was only known from the specimens of one collector 

 (Drummond) and was originally described by Henfrey from a culti- 

 vated plant. These facts seem to imply that the latter species is an 

 uncommon one, and therefore less likely to have had its identity or 

 poisonous properties recognised. 





