121 



Additions to the Flora of South Australai.(i) 



IMo. 7. 



By J. M. Black. 



[Read June 12, 1913.] 

 Plates IV. and V. 



An asterisk denotes an alien plant more or less naturalized, 



Malvace^. — Hibiscus Trionum, L. (''Bladder Hibiscus"). 

 Orchards near Smithfield (F. R. Zietz). A garden escape. — 

 Mediterranean region, Asia and Central Australia. 



OxALiDACE.E. — ^Oxalis flava, L. Growing in large clumps 

 between Henley Beach and the Port River (H. H. D. Griffith). 

 A yellow-flowered species with digitate leaves, flowering here 

 April-May. — South Africa. 



LEGUMiNOSiE. — Swainsona Oliveri, F. v. M., in Melb. 

 Chem., new ser., ii., 84. Professor Ewart, Government 

 Botanist of Victoria, informs me that Mueller's original 

 description of the colour of the flowers was : ''The petals blue 

 towards summit when dry." Tate (Fl. S.A., 68) says: 

 "Petals blue," and Moore (Fl. N.S.AV., 151) says: "Flowers 

 bluish." The dried specimens brought from Tarcoola in 1912 

 by J. W. Mellor showed the flowers as light-yellow. I was 

 fortunate enough to grow two plants in my garden from seed, 

 and it then appeared that the natural colour of the standard 

 is pale-yellow, while the keel is white with a pink tip. The 

 flower contained no shade of blue, and the standard remained 

 folded during flowering. The curved style has a small tuft 

 of hairs behind the stigma ; that is, on the lower side of the 

 style (as in S. microphylla, Gray), the upper or inner side being 

 almost glabrous. The narrow, rigid pod of my cultivated 

 plants hung downwards by the slender peduncle when ripe, 

 and penetrated the ground by means of its sharp beak, which 

 is simply the straight, persistant part of the style. In the 

 soft garden soil the pod was buried for half its length, so that 

 this is doubtless a natural method of depositing the seeds safely 

 in the earth. 



(1) Papers of a similar character have been published in pre- 

 vious volumes of the Transactions, as follows: — No. 1, vol. xxxiii., 

 223; No. 2, vol. xxxv., 2; No. 3, vol. xxxv., 60; No. 4, vol. xxxvi., 

 21; No. 5, vol. xxxvi., 171; No. 6, vol. xxxvii. 



