144 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



"Daunbagge" or "Haun pantey" of the Malays with leaves spread- 

 ingly spinular and with gradually much pointed individual fruits. 



The Java-plant may again be different from that of Amboina,. 

 particularly so as many species of Pandanus are extraordinarily 

 local, because Kurz (in Seemann's Journal of Botany for 1867, 

 p. 127) describes the leaves as very thick, the aggregated mass of 

 fruits as considerably longer than broad, and the fruits below 

 the middle as cohering or connate by 2-4 together, although in 

 the delineation, tab. 64, they are figured, -but perhaps erroneously,. 

 as merely in close apposition. They are however very different in 

 form to those of Hombronia edulis, and upwards much more 

 slender, even more so than those of Rumphius' species ; they are 

 ending indeed pyramidally. As the specific name eaulis is pre- 

 occupied by Du Petit Thouars for a very different Madagascar - 

 Pandanus (Desvaux, Journal de Botanique, 1808, p. 47) as 

 duly recorded by Sprengel, Steudel, Kunth, and Dietrich, we must 

 resort to the name Hombronia as the next available for the 

 designation of the species brought by Sir William M'Gregor, by 

 which means then also the dedication will not be destroyed, no 

 other genus bearing Mons. Hombron's name. Professor I. B. 

 Balfour (in the Journal of the Linn. Soc. xvii., 45) also leaves 

 Hombronia edulis still queringly under Pandanus dubius. In the 

 series of the Annales des Sciences naturelles here is wanting 

 tome 1 of serie 6 (1876), where Alex. Braun, at page 291, refers to 

 this Hombronia, possibly under a new designation. 



ADDITIONAL NOTE ON ASTROTRICHA BID- 

 DULPHIANA. 



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



In the last issue of the Victorian Naturalist the abovementioned 

 plant was described, but from flowering specimens only. Since 

 then fruiting branchlets were received from Mrs. Biddulph, so that 

 notes on the carpologic peculiarities, which prove remarkable, 

 can now already be given. Ripe fruit nearly ^ inch long, about 

 yk inch broad, glabrous, faintly and irregularly corrugate-rough, 

 ovate-ellipsoid, contracted at the commissure, otherwise turgid, 

 terminated by the denticulated short calyx-limb ; the two fruitlets 

 spontaneously seceding, on transverse section almost semicylindric, 

 the commissural side broad and nearly flat, between which and 

 the seed-bearing cavity through intrusion of the endocarp two 

 accessory small tubular cells formed either hollow or filled with 

 substance similar to the albument, but perfectly closed, although 

 placed close to the commissure. Seed concave-convex, the 

 sudden prominence along the inner side as extensive as the width 

 of the seed ; albument equable. Mrs. Biddulph writes that the 

 flowers are either bluish or purplish-black. 



