16 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW AUSTRALIAN PLANTS, WITH 

 OCCASIONAL OTHER ANNOTATIONS ; 



By Baron von Mueller, K.C.M.G., M. & Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 



(Continued.) 

 Acacia Howitti. 



Viscidulous ; branchlets slender, flexile, streaked, short- 

 pubescent ; phyllodes small, sessile, curved-lanceolar or verging 

 into an ovate form, longitudinally few-venulated, densely ciliolated, 

 short mucronate or only apiculate, almost glabrescent except at 

 the margin, their secondary venules faint and partly reticular, 

 their glandule almost obliterated ; stipules broadish, very short, 

 membranous ; headlets of flowers small, axillary, solitary or some- 

 times two together on velutinellous peduncles of from equal to 

 double length ; flowers in each headlet not very numerous ; 

 bracts mostly lanceolar- or rhomboid-cuneate ; calyx bluntly and 

 coherently five-lobed, as well as the corolla beset with short 

 hairlets outside; fruit rather short and narrow, much compressed, 

 hardly curved, imperfectly and then slightly constricted between 

 the seeds, ciliolated but otherwise glabrescent ; seeds placed 

 longitudinally, oval-ellipsoid, compressed, shining-black, theareole 

 on each side long ; strophiole pale, hardly folded, thrice or less 

 shorter than the seed. 



At Yarram-Yarram on Bodman's Creek, also in Glen Falloch ; 

 A. W. Howilt, Esq. 



Phyllodes chartaceous, dark-green, mostly 5^-^ inch long. 

 Peduncles much shorter than the phyllodes. Fruits to 2 inches 

 long, to ^ inch broad, the valves of thin texture. Length of 

 seeds hardly ^ inch. The form of the phyllodes is that of A. 

 buxifolia (to which A. hispidula, Cunn. in Hook. "Icon. Plant.'^ 

 161, now Willd.jSeemsclosely allied); but our new plantis in almost 

 every other respect very different. Among the Plurinerves it 

 approaches to some extent the equally viscidulous J. ixiophylla 

 and A. montana ; both, however, belong to the inlands desert- 

 region, not to the silvan mountain-tracts of the coast-country ; 

 besides the phyllodes of A. ixiophylla are very dissimilar in form 

 and venulation, the sepals disconnected and the fruits crisped. 

 A. montana (never truly a mountain-plant) possesses longer and 

 blunter phyllodes with only two primary venules, fruits much 

 beset with hairlets and seeds with a more folded funicle. A. 

 Howitti shares the climatic conditions conducive to A. subporosa, 

 and notwithstanding the very much shorter and conspicuously 

 ciliolated phyllodes and the also much less developed strophiole, 

 comes nearest to that species. Mr. Howitt observes that the 

 height of any of the plants seen by him did not exceed 15 feet. 



