TAB, IX. 
Marsilea macropus. 
Foliis peltatis quaternis petiolisque elongatis sericeo-tomen- 
tosis, foliolis lato-cuneatis apice erosis, peclunculis subradi- 
calibus elongatis biuncialibus, capsulis oblique ovatis dense 
sericeo-strigosis transversim lineatis bine basi gibbosis, 
caudice repente ramoso. 
Hab. Australia, low inundated grounds ; Lacblan river and 
Liverpool plains. All . Cunningham . Severn river, S. W. 
Australia, Drummond . 
Our finest specimens are sent from Swan river, among the 
later collections of Mr. Drummond. It is a species of Marsilea , 
as far as I can find, hitherto quite undescribed ; remarkable 
for the very sericeously tomentose leaves, (especially the 
underside), and petiole and capsules, and for the great length 
of the peduncles of the latter. 
The caudex creeps for some length, and is scarcely so thick 
as a crow’s-quill, rooting, branched, and knotty ; the knots 
are densely woolly with ferruginous hair, and seem to be the 
rudiments of a new cluster of fronds. Fronds or leaves from 
the apex of a woolly knot or branch, two to four from one 
point. Petioles from four inches to a span long, erect, flexuose 
slender, silky, bearing at the point four spreading broadly 
cuneate leaflets, finely and radiately veined, the veins here 
and there anastomosing, villous with dense silky hairs, especi- 
ally beneath: the hairs often deciduous above, and occasionally 
beneath, subulate, articulated, tawny. From the very base, 
among the cluster of petioles, arise one or two erect peduncles 
about two inches long, in other respects resembling the pe- 
tioles; these are terminated each by an obliquely erect, ovate, 
compressed capsule, transversely striated, with a gibbosity on 
one side at the base, densely clothed with imbricating, subu- 
late, jointed hairs. 
Fig. 1 . Leaflet, f. 2. Capsule, f 3. The same cut through 
transversely, f. 4. Hairs from the Capsule : — all more or less 
magnified. 
B 
