11 



Papua. 

 Astrolabe Range (F. H. Brown). 



Var. latifolia Benth. 



Robert Brown's Iter Australiense 1802-5 (No. 4737, Northumberland Islands. 

 and 4.738, Shoalwater Bay Passage). This is the type of var. 'latifolia Benth, with 

 plump, oval buds. 



Port Mackay (Amalia Dietrich), showing transit to normal tereticomis. Percy 

 Island (Allan Cunningham in "Captain P. P. King's Expedition." Herbert River. 

 " Endeavour River from the Earl of Mount Morris, ex herb. Lambert," in herb. Cant. 

 With very broad rims to fruits. 



Keepkie's Dairy, Crescent Lagoon, West Rockhampton (W. N. Jaggard). " Blue 

 Gum." " Large seeded tereticomis. " Grows in low, flat country, Rockhampton (A. 

 Murphy). A careful collection of forms in the Rockhampton district, allied to E. 

 tereticomis, should be made. Mr. -Murphy, when collecting " north of Rockhampton," 

 sent a " Large seed Blue Gum " with broadly-lanceolate mature leaves, ovate to nearly 

 circular mature leaves, and not perfectly mature fruits, with rather long pedicels. 

 The fruits are of medium size, slightly urceolate, nearly hemispherical and inclined 

 to be flat-rimmed. 



AFFINITIES. 



1. With E. rostrata Schlecht. 



The closest affinity of E. tereticomis Sm. is to E. rostrata Schlecht, in fact they run into each other 

 as do so many species in this genus ; at the same time it would be highly inconvenient in practice not to 

 separate them. 



The late Rev. J. E. Tenison-Woods expressed the opinion (Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. VII, 331), that 

 E. rostrata and E. tereticomis are specifically identical. Baron von Mueller (" Euealyptographia," under 

 E. rostrata), says ..." indeed from a strictly phytographic view it should be considered merely a 

 variety of E. tereticomis, but for convenience sake and practical purposes the specific name may well be 

 retained for so important a tree as this." The species are undoubtedly closely related ; E. tereticofnis 

 usually grows in drier situations than does E. rostrata, while the operculum of E. tereticomis is usually 

 sufficiently distinct in appearance from the pinched or beaked appearance of that of E. rostrata. E. tereti- 

 comis in one of its forms grows, as we have already seen, in swampy localities, and sometimes the shape of 

 the operculum is not too safe a criterion to go by. For example the " Water Gum " or " Creek Gum"' 

 (E. rostrata) of the Burrowa district, N.S.W., is not constant in form. We have (1) Comparatively large 

 nearly hemispherical fruits and the typical opercula. (2) Specimens scarcely differing from the rostrata 

 of the interior. Then we have, growing but a few yards from the preceding, trees whose fruits I find it 

 impossible to separate from (2). Extreme forms of the fruits of E. rostrata and E. tereticomis are sufficiently 

 distinct, but these are identical. The pedicels are filiform and the opercula are pinched, but intermediate 

 in form between typical tereticomis and typical rostrata. I have placed this with E. tereticomis as I have 

 to place it somewhere, but it equally belongs to rostrata, and I repeat I cannot find any character in these 

 specimens which shows that it belongs more to the one than the other. In other words, it is a link in the 

 grand tereticomis-rostrata species. 



