BOTANIC AND DOMAIN GARDENS. 
21 
The samples of Sparmannia sent to the Melbourne Exhibition have 
been prepared from both the living- and dried barks of the shrub. I 
have never read of it ever having 1 been discovered that this plant con- 
tained a fibre of any value. Hitherto I had only known it to be 
interesting as an ornamental shrub, or the plant in whose blossoms the 
great Linnaeus first discovered the sexual system in botany. My intro- 
spection of its fibrous nature, as with others now exhibited, was only 
gained by mere accident in a hurried attempt to collect and prepare a 
variety of fibres for your Exhibition, but if even one of them proves to 
be of commercial value, and I believe many of them will, because of 
their textures, and the quickness of their growth, the object I have in 
view will be gained, as they will be a boon to the colonists. The Spar- 
mannia, like the grass-cloth plant of China as soon as cut, shoot3 up 
(even in a poor soil) with wonderful vigour. The canes, if I may call 
them such, are often as thick as one’s thumb, and they average in height 
from six to eight feet. In good soil, two crops may be safely reckoned 
upon in the year. 
The plants of Queensland, from which fibres have been prepared, 
have all been grown here, and were introduced by the late Mr. Dallachy, 
and Baron von Mueller, my predecessors in the directorship of these 
Gardens. Judging from the growth of the Hibiscus heterophyllus, 
Sida retusa (Queensland hemp), Pipturus propinquus or Queensland 
grass-cloth plant, Brachychiton acerifolium, “The Flame tree,” Ster- 
culia rupestris — “The Bottle tree,” and the samples of fibre now produced 
from them; the great harvest to be gained by their cultivation in 
Victoria would be as great as in the sister colony. It may appear 
strange to many, that plants like these, and others described indigenous 
to a warmer clime should thrive as well, and even better, in a cooler one, 
yet there are ample proofs that such is fact. The growth of the 
flame-tree for instance (Sterculia or Brachychiton acerifolium of Queens- 
land and New South Wales) is more rapid in Victoria than in either of 
the colonies mentioned, and the bast furnished by this tree is, I con- 
sider, superior to “ Cuba bast.” This of course remains to be proved by 
those in Philadelphia, who are better able to judge of its merits, and of 
others which I have described in my list. But it is more singular still, 
to observe, that plants which grow side by side with these in warmer 
latitudes, will not grow here at all, but merely exist. Laportia gigas, 
the great stinging tree of which I have sent samples of fibre from plants 
which never attain in this garden more than four feet in height — being- 
cut down by frost every winter. Yet I have seen it beside the flame-tree 
