389 



and determined by Mr. J. H. Maiden. South Africa; 

 recorded by Professor Ewart (1909) as an exotic growing wild 

 in Victoria, but not yet sufficiently established to be con- 

 sidered naturalized. Grown as a garden plant in many coun- 

 tries on account of its handsome, radiate flower-heads. Also 

 in cemetery at Robe in 1910 (C. D. Black). 



Erodiophyllurn Ehleri, F. v. M, (PI. xx.) Fifty miles 

 north-east of the Burra (Walter Gill). Mr. Gill tells me that 

 he collected this very rare plant some years ago on the road 

 from the Burra to Sturt Vale Station, and, as far as his 

 memory serves, it was not more than 1 foot high. This 

 locality is in the northern part of Tate's Dist. M. The Tate 

 Herbarium contains a single specimen in flower, from Wool- 

 tana Head Station, which lies to the east of Lake Frome, and 

 is on the border of Dists. C and S. The type was gathered 

 by J. Young in 1875, "between Elizabeth River and Youldeh" 

 (Ooldea). The species, therefore, seems to have a wide dis- 

 tribution in South Australia, but is probably very localized. 

 The locality given for the type is rather indefinite, as the 

 distance between the Elizabeth River (an affluent of Pernatty 

 Lagoon) and Ooldea is some 300 miles. Some slight amend- 

 ments and additions to Mueller's description (Fragm., ix., 

 119) should be made. All the flowers are not supported by 

 scales of the receptacle : the numerous central ones, which 

 crown the summit of the conical receptacle, have no scales. 

 They are all bisexual but sterile. Below these come 4 or 5 

 rows of short female flowers, embraced by conspicuous lanceo- 

 late bract-like imbricate scales, which are ciliate on the 

 scarious margins. These female flowers are not without 

 corollas, as Mueller declares, but the corolla is only 1 mm. 

 long, tubular, truncate, 5-nerved, and shortly hairy. Then 

 comes the outer row of about a dozen ligulate female flowers. 

 Both these forms of female flower are fertile. The head 

 undergoes changes when the fruiting period is reached. It 

 develops a globular shape, the scales become cartilaginous, 

 keeled, and concrete at base, and as the achenes are hidden 

 by them, they present the appearance of the inner involucral 

 bracts of an ordinary composite flower-head : the real bracts 

 of ErodiophyMurrbj which are in one row, and are at first 

 herbaceous, become horny in the lower half, and are reflexed 

 to such a degree that the tip is pressed against the thickened, 

 woody base of the involucre. The receptacle becomes 

 obconical in fruit, and the achene becomes hard, almost bonv, 

 subtetragonous, and crowned by a short, crenate rim. 

 Mueller at first considered this genus as nearest to the South 

 African Gandeum and Steirodiscus, and in his first census 

 he placed it, among Australian genera, immediately after 



