EUCALYPTUS CLAVIGERA. 



Allan Cunningham, in Walpers repertorium botanices systematicse ii. 926 (1843) ; F. M., in the Journal of the 

 Proceedings of the Linnean Society iii. 98 ; Bentham, flora Australiensis iii. 250. 



Arborescent, not tal l ; \joung branchlets often hairy-rough ; leaves partly opposite and sessile, 

 partly scattered and short-stalked, either from a cordate or roundish base orbicular- or lanceolar- 

 oval or from a short attenuated base oblong- or elongate-lanceolar, not shining ; lateral veins 

 prominent, very spreading, rather distant, the circumferential vein removed from the edge or 

 partly confluent with it ; umbels crowded into mostly compound and lateral corymbs ; stalks short ; 

 stalklets very slender, usually longer than the flowers ; unopened calyces pearshaped ; lid depressed- 

 hemispherical, shining, much shorter than the tube of the calyx ; stamens all fertile, deeply 

 inflexed while in bud ; anthers oblong-oval, opening by longitudinal slits ; stigma not dilated ; 

 fruits hemiellipsoid, slightly urnshaped, generally 3-celled, not angular ; rim very narrow, valves 

 deeply enclosed; seeds without any appendage. 



From the most northern regions of "Western Australia along some of the coast-tracts of 

 Arnhem's Land to Carpentaria, in sterile country. 



A sm all tree (so far as known), flowering already whUe yet a shrub. Leaves somewhat wavy 

 flexed, of a dull greyish hue ; their lateral veins ascendingly curved, passing successively into 

 the edge of the leaf and constituting an interrupted intramarginal vein ; the veinlets closely 

 reticular, the ultimate areoles between them exceedingly small and somewhat pellucid from 

 elongated pores but not well defined oil-dots. It is left to future labors to elucidate fully the 

 microscopic anatomy of Eucalyptus-leaves in mutual contrast of various species, by which 

 researches some of the specific forms of the genus are likely to ' become still better defined. 

 Stomata isogenous. Ultimate umbels containing six or fewer rarely more flowers ; tube of the. 

 calyx not angular, rather suddenly dilated upwards ; lid very smooth, almost membranous, quite 

 blunt, or raised at its centre into a minute point, not rarely shortened to a patellar form. 



Name of the species from the somewhat club-like form of the united flowerbud and its stalklet. 



Bentham very properly places E. clavigera next to E. grandifolia and E. tesselaris. In the 

 botanic collections, formed by Mr. Schultz at Port Darwin, specimens of E. grandifolia occur, 

 which show the leaves more generally opposite, all conspicuously stalked and all broad, the flowers 

 larger on still longer and also stronger stalklets, the lid broader, not shining, somewhat wrinkled, 

 more convex and prominently pointed ; fruit is not available for comparison. E. tesselaris differs 

 in all the branches being smooth, the leaves all scattered and narrow with closer veins, the 

 flowers smaller on short stalklets and also generally fewer in each individual umbel and perhaps 

 in its tesselar semipersistent bark. E. Papuana may not really be distinct as a species from 

 E. clavigera, as pointed out formerly (F. v. M., Descriptive Notes on Papuan Plants i. 8), but the 

 tree from New Guinea is as yet imperfectly known, and we here are quite unacquainted with the 

 characteristics of its bark, on which for due discrimination of Eucalypts so very much depends. 

 Should E. Papuana prove identical with B. clavigera, we might then assume, that the Extra- 

 Australian species had all emigrated perhaps through the agency of migratory birds, as even 

 E. Decaisneana (if correctly here identified) may be only an extreme variety of E. alba, and as 

 moreover the few phyllodinous Acacias known from New Guinea and the adjoining islands 

 represent not endemic types but merely reappearing identical Australian forms. 



An opportunity is offered to refer here generally to the Eucalypts of Northern Australia, so 

 far as they are hitherto known. The shrubby desert-species are as yet not much gathered in the 



