EUCALYPTUS PKUINOSA. 



Schauer, in Walpers repertorium botaniees systematicae ii. 926 (1843) ; F. v. M., fragmenta phytograpnise Australia 

 iii. 132 ; Bentham, flora Australiensis iii. 213 (not of Turczaninow) ; E. apodophylla, P. v. M., fragmenta 

 phytographiae Australise ii. 71. 



Glabrous ; leaves all opposite, sessile, roundish- or oftener oval-cordate, as well as the 

 branchlets and inflorescence generally tinged with a whitish-grey somewhat evanescent bloom ; 

 primary veins of the leaves mostly subtle, rather distant, very spreading, the circumferential vein 

 irregularly remote from the margin; oil-dots obliterated; umbels in short terminal panicles ; 

 flowers in each umbel 7 or fewer ; stalklets thin, about as long as the tube of the calyx or variously 

 shorter ; lid conic-hemispherical, slightly acute or short-pointed, from about half as long to fully 

 as long as the obconic-semiovate tube of the calyx ; stamens short, all fertile, inflexed before 

 expansion ; anthers minute, almost globular, opening by lateral pore-like slits ; style short ; 

 stigma not dilated ; fruit semiovate, somewhat attenuated at the base ; valves 4 rarely 3 or 

 5, short, reaching to the narrow rim or slightly protruding beyond it ; fertile seeds without any 

 appendage, their testa net-veined ; sterile seed smaller, the majority broad and short, some 

 narrow and more elongated. 



Eather frequent in arid country around the Gulf of Carpentaria and in Arnhem's Land, 

 especially on the sandstone-tablelands, extending southward at least to the sources of the 

 Victoria-Eiver, the commencement of Sturt's Creek (F. v. M.) and of Ord-Eiver (Al. Forrest), 

 occurring also on the islands of Carpentaria (E. Brown, Bauer, Henne). 



A small or middle-sized tree ; bark persistent, rough, wrinkled, greyish outside. 

 Branchlets sometimes sharply sometimes hardly angular. Leaves equilateral, horizontally 

 spreading, quite or nearly sessile. One or few of the umbels occasionally axillary, their 

 stalks never much elongated. Neither lid nor tube of the calyx angular. Anthers of some 

 of the outer stamens broader than long and verging even into a renate form. Style rather 

 thick, only about ^th inch long. Ovules extending quite around the summit of the placental 

 column. Fruits sometimes barely half the length and width of those illustrated in the 

 lithographic plate, and the valves occasionally more terminal. 



It is only E. melanophloia, with which our present species could be confounded ; indeed the 

 general resemblance of the two is so great, that Dr. Leichhardt mentions them in the journal of his 

 famous " Overland Expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington " indiscriminately as the 

 " Silver-leaved Ironbark-tree." In traversing North- Australia about a quarter of a century ago I 

 noticed however, that K pruinosa has the bark outside greyish and not so deeply fissured as that 

 of E. melanophloia, which — as the name implies — has the bark blackish outside ; moreover the 

 last-mentioned species seems restricted to extra- and sub-tropical Australia, advancing south as 

 far as the Namoi and often indicating an auriferous country. This difi'erent regional range, 

 in which numerous other plants participate, was mentioned already in the Journal of the 

 Proceedings of the Linnean Society 1859, p. 94. Furthermore the deeply furrowed bark brings 

 E. melanophloia into the series of Schizophloise, while B. pruinosa would by Southern Colonists 

 be classed with the so-called " Box-trees " (Ehytiphloiae). Irrespective of these differences the 

 anthers of E. melanophloia have generally longer openings than those of E. pruinosa ; and 

 although this characteristic is a trifling one, yet so much value was attached to it by Bentham, 

 that he actually placed the two species into two different sections of his system of Eucalypts, 

 notwithstanding their close affinity to each other in every respect. Besides the stigma of E. 



