xxvii LINDENIA 



595 



river-side. I can only suppose that the seeds are transported by 

 the winds. The history of the genus is suggested in my remarks 

 on Lindenia. 



Lindenia (Rubiaceae) 



Respecting its distribution in the Pacific, this genus of showy 

 river-side shrubs takes the same place amongst the plants that 

 Galaxias takes among the fishes. It is full of mystery. Of the 

 four species known, two grow on the river-banks of Central America 

 and two in similar stations in the islands of the Western Pacific. 

 Of the last-named both occur in New Caledonia, one of them being 

 endemic, whilst the other, Lindenia vitiensis, is found also in Fiji 

 and Samoa. Reinecke seemingly records no Samoan species, but 

 in the list of additions at the end of his Flora Vitiensis, Seemann 

 refers to the Fijian species as having been found in Samoa by Dr. 

 Graeffe. 



Lindenia vitiensis, as Home aptly remarks, adorns the rocky 

 banks of many Fijian streams with its cream-coloured flowers, 

 which impregnate the air with their sweet odour. I found it in 

 Vanua Levu, both at the heads of the estuaries and beside the 

 stream and the torrent in the heart of the mountains. It was often 

 associated with a species of Dolicholobium, which it resembled 

 strangely in its large, showy, scented flowers and in the form of the 

 leaf. Seemann says it is also accompanied at the river-side in Viti 

 Levu by Ficus bambussefolia and Acalypha rivularis. It is note- 

 worthy that all the four plants here mentioned as being associated 

 river-side plants in Fiji possess the long, narrow leaves of the willow- 

 type, a subject that is discussed in note 79. 



The capsules of Lindenia vitiensis contain numbers of small, 

 angular seeds about 1-5 mm. across, some 400 of them when 

 well dried going to a grain. The seeds float buoyantly by reason 

 of their outer covering of crisp, air-bearing, cellular tissue. When 

 this outer covering is stripped off, the minute nucleus, or seed 

 proper, which is barely a millimetre across and is but slightly pro- 

 tected, sinks at once. As the seeds float on the surface of a stream 

 they might readily get on the plumage of an aquatic bird ; but they 

 have no special means of attachment ; though, if they dried on the 

 feathers they might adhere to some extent. That they could be 

 carried in mud adhering to a bird across an ocean's breadth I think 

 most unlikely ; and it should be remembered in this connection 

 that only the dead or sickly seeds would be found at the bottom of 

 a stream. 



