CURIOSITIES OF VEGETATION. 
lo5 
Mount Abundance and on Mount Kennedy,both 
situated between latitude 26° and 27° south. 
On the table land of Hope, near latitude 25° 
south, it was found growing more gregariously, 
on the stony banks of the channel of a torrent 
from the hills. It seems, however, to be the 
general habit of this tree to grow detached 
and isolated, as it were, for some others are 
referred to as growing in various solitary 
singular situations. 
Sir Thomas Mitchell has named this plant, 
(which proves to be a new genus of the natural 
order Sterculiaceas,) Delabechea, after Sir 
Henry T. Ue la Beche, as president of a 
Society, (the Geological,) which has greatly en- 
couraged him in his Australian researches : 
and in honour of a science which has occa- 
sionally thrown some light on his dark and 
difficult path. Dr. Lindley has described the 
species as Delabechea rupestris, from its habit 
of growing among rocks. Our engraving, 
prepared from a sketch published in Sir T. 
Mitchell's journal, gives an idea of the general 
appearance of the tree. 
Delabechea, according to Dr. Lindley, 
agrees with Sterculia in the position of the 
radicle [the embryo root] with respect to the 
hilum [a scar on the seeds, showing where 
they had been attached] ; but it is otherwise 
a Brachychiton, with which it more especially 
corresponds in the singular condition of the 
seeds. These are placed six together, in the 
interior of long-stalked, ovate, mucronate, 
smooth, deep-brown follicles [the peculiar 
kind of seed-pod or carpel], of a tough papery 
texture, and lined with a thin fur of stellate 
hairs. The seeds themselves are also closely 
covered with starry hairs, which are so en- 
tangled that they hold tbe seeds together 
firmly ; these hairs, however, are absent from 
the upper half of the seed, whose thin brittle 
vascular primine [the exterior integument of 
the ovule] is shining, smooth, and marked 
with a brown nipple, the remains of the 
foramen [an aperture through the integuments 
of the seed] ; within the primine lies the bony 
crustaceous secundine [the second integument 
of the ovule, within the primine], which is 
quite loose, and seems as if it were independent 
of the primine. Eventually the end of the 
thin brittle primine breaks like an eggshell, 
and the secundine falls out. The seeds them- 
selves remaining attached to each other and to 
the follicle, resemble six deep cells, or may 
be rather compared to half-a-dozen brown 
eggshells, placed on the broad end, from which 
the young have escaped through the point. — 
Lindley, in Mitchell's Journal. 
The Delabechea rupestris is a large tree, 
of very droll form, having a tumid trunk, 
swelling or bulged out in the middle like a 
barrel, and contracting at the base and just 
below the first springing of the branches 
above, as represented in the engraving. It is 
this singular form which has suggested its 
name of the Bottle-tree. The wood is white, 
of remarkably loose texture, soft and brittle, 
owing to the presence of an enormous quantity 
of very large tubes of pitted tissue, some 
measuring a line and a half across, which 
form the whole inner face of each zone of 
wood. The leaves are linear-oblong, acumi- 
nate, and entire. The inflorescence is axillary 
and trichotomous. 
In his description of a remarkable specimen 
of the Delabechea found on Mount Kennedy, 
