15 



DESCRIPTION. 



CCXCI. E. Irbyi Baker and Smith. 



In " Research on the Eucalypts," 2nd edition, 242 (1920). 



Following is the original description : — 



A small tree, with a smooth, pale or ashy-coloured bark. Abnormal leaves broad-ovate to ovate, 

 sometimes mucronate, petiolate, base rounded, truncate or slightly cordate, fairly thick and coriaceous. 

 Normal leaves coarse, lanceolate to broad-lanceolate, or even ovate, acuminate, up to 8 inches long, mostly 

 straight, on unusually long petioles ; venation often indistinct, intramarginal vein looped, well removed from 

 the edge, lateral veins spreading, distant, inclined at an angle of 30-40 degrees to the midrib. Peduncles 

 angular, axillary, 1 to 2 lines long, bearing umbels of mostly three flowers. Buds shortly-pedicellate; 

 calyx-tube turbinate, 2 lines in length ; operculum blunt, conical, often slightly broader than and more 

 than half as long as the tube. 



Fruit hemispherical to sub-cylindrical, glaucous, or shining; rim flat to convex, often gcmtwhat 

 depressed, cracked transversely ; valves more or less exserted ; 3 lines long and 3 lines in diameter. 



RANGE. 



The type comes from Alma Tier, Interlaken, Tasmania, growing amongst 

 E. Gunnii (L. G. Irby, now Conservator of Forests of that State) and so far it has not 

 been found out of that island. 



AFFINITIES. 



1. With E. Gunnii Hook., f. 



Some of the fruits are so like the hemispherical form of E. Gunnii, that when the material was first 

 collected it was placed tentatively with that species until other characters could be worked out, but it is, 

 however, a much coarser plant morphologically than that species . . . . , from which species it differs 

 in the physical features of its baik — lacking the sweet nature of the sap of E. Gunnii, which can always 

 be obtained by cutting the bark, and from which it derives its common name of " Cider Gum." In foliage 

 it is not unlike E. Dalyrmpleana J.H.M. Its affinities lie equally between E. viminalis, on the one hand, 

 and E. Gunnii, on the other, so that, in a systematic arrangement, it might be placed between these two. 

 (Original description.) 



