a New Australian Pine. 21 



Sydney Garden plants the name Leichhardtia Macleayana.* 

 But in accordance with the unalterable rules in systematic 

 phytology, this appellation, intended*, to form a renewed 

 generous,, acknowledgment of the fruitful labours of an 

 immortal ' man, has to give way to the priority of a more 

 modest yet not less valuable botanical monument erected by 

 the great and venerable Eobt. Brown to the memory of my 

 lamented countryman.f 



In the newest monography of coniferae, published by the 

 late Professor Endlicher,} the view of Mirbel has been 

 adopted, which separates the Sandarach-pines of Australia, 

 (the Cypress-pines of the colonists), principally on account of 

 a six valved fruit, as Frenela from the typical Mediterranean 

 Callitris, which genus is characterised by a tetramerous 

 strobilus. M'Leay's pine therefore obtains in consonance 

 with these views, likewise generic rank, as it differs from 

 both Callitris and Frenela in an octamerous fruit ; and this 

 generic character is moreover supported habitually by a 

 much stronger, more rigid, and quaternary development of 

 the leaves. This quaternary disposition of the leaves dis- 

 plays beautifully the symmetry in the numerical development 

 of flowers and leaves, reduced to half the number of the 

 fruit divisions, -and harmonizes therefore in proportion to the 

 number of these organs in Callitris, Frenela et Actinostrobus, 

 although quaternary leaves are actually without parallel 

 hitherto in Coniferae, some species excepted of Ephedra, a 

 genus otherwise extremely different. 



Admitting thus our pine into generic rank, the continental 

 Australian coniferas exhibit now the following array of 

 genera: — Frenela, Actinostrobus, Octoclinis, Araucaria, 

 Dammara, Podocarpus, Ephedra. 



Octoclinis. — Flowers monoecious ; male ones : a terminal 

 ovate amentum ; stamens many, four in a whorl, imbricated ; 

 filaments very short, bearing a peltate, scaly round acuminate 

 connectivum, on which the three globose anther-cells are 

 inserted; anther-cells opening lengthwise. Female flow- 

 ers Strobile pyramidate-globose, octogonous, slightly 



compressed, eight-valved. ' Valves woody, of unequal 



* T. W. Shepherd's Catalogue of Plants cultivated at Sydney, 1851, p. 15. 

 + Leichhardtia Australis, an asclepiadeous climber, conf. B.Brown's appen- 

 dix to Start's Central Australia, vol. II. p. 81. (1849.) 

 | Endlicher Synopsis Coniferaruni, Sangalli, 1847. 



