HIGHLAND PLANTS FROM NEW GUINEA. 21 
Gaulticra mundula. 
Dwarf; branchlets beset with scattered setular brownish hairlets; leaves very 
small, firm, on extremely short petioles, generally lanceolar-ovate, glabrous, flat, 
crenular-serrulate, the denticles pointed at first ; flowers very small, solitary or two 
or racemously few together, on short pedicels, glabrous; bracts rather minute, 
blunt, imbricate, persistent; bracteoles usually close to the calyx, semilanceolar- 
deltoid, deciduous ; calyx deeply five-cleft, remaining unsucculent or its undivided 
portion somewhat enlarging, the lobes deltoid-lanceolar ; corolla hardly double the 
length of the calyx, its tube several times longer than the lobes ; stamens three times 
shorter than the corolla; filaments hardly longer than the anthers, almost capillulary- 
thin; anthers ovate, somewhat truncate, minutely apiculate, but unprovided with 
posterior appendiles and terminal empty tubules ; style very short; stigma almost or 
quite lobeless ; fruit capsular, only basifixed, slightly surpassed by the calyx, deeply 
valvular-dehiscent, impressed at the middle of the vertex; seeds very numerous, 
minute, pale-brownish, shining, often truncate. 
Summit of Mount Victoria. 
Rhizome somewhat woody. Leaves a third to two-thirds of an inch long, not 
unlike those of Vaccinium ambyandrum. Calyx during anthesis only an eighth of an 
inch long, exceptionally four-cleft. Corolla measuring about a sixth of an inch in 
leneth ; anthers opening terminally. Diameter of capsule nearly a quarter of an 
inch. G. (Diplycosia) discolor has larger leaves much paler beneath, the orifice of 
the corolla as well as the filaments and ovulary beset with hairlets; but the anthers are 
also devoid of appendices and tubules. G.nummularioides has proportionately broader 
leaves beset with setular hairlets, always solitary flowers, tubulated anthers, and 
the calyx at last conspicuously succulent. G. ciliolata from Mt. Kini Balu is still 
more distinct. G. Blumei (Vaccinium microphyllum Bl. Bydrag. 851) has according 
to the notes of Beccari and Clarke somewhat larger and blunter leaves, seemingly 
never racemous flowers, blunter calyx-lobes, again tubulated anthers, and may differ 
in further characteristics. Our Papuan plant is also near to G. antipoda, although 
that species has the flower always solitary, the anther-cells bicuspidate and the 
fruit-calyx normally baceate; the alpine state, however, as elucidated and illustrated 
by Sir Jos. Hooker (Fl. Tasm, I. 242 tab. LXIII) is almost representative of our 
plant so far as stature and leaves are concerned. [If still further proof was wanting of 
the intenability of the genus Diplycosia, it could be supplied by a glance on the 
excellent illustration from South American specimens of Gaultiera microphylla in the 
Flora Antartica Il, t. ec. XVI, that plant indeed being closely akin to the Papuan 
congener just described, though its bracteoles are smaller, its filamants towards the 
middle dilated, its anther cells doubly pointed, while the undivided portion of the 
calyx is finally much longer than the lobes. 
