No. 250. 
Eremocitrus glauca Swingle. 
The Wild Lemon. 
(Family RUTACE^E.) 
Botanical description. Genus Eremocitrm Swingle in Journ. Agric. Research 
(U.S.A.), ii, pp. 85-100, with text figures 1-7 and Plate 8 (1914). 
Following is the original description : 
The genus Ercmocitrus resembles Citrus in the structure and appearance of the fruits; it differs from 
it (1) in the leaves which have on both surfaces palisade cells, sunken stomates, and appressed few-celled 
hairs; (2) in the 4- to 5-merous flowers, with free stamens and a 4- or 5-celled ovary, with two ovules 
in each cell. 
The leaves are gray-green, thick and leathery, and markedly pellucid punctate; they are nearly 
alike on both sides, having four ventral and two dorsal layers of palisade cells, sunken stomates, an epidermis 
with a thick cuticle, and scattered few-celled appressed hairs on both surfaces. The spines are usually 
long and slender, but are sometimes wanting, especially on fruiting branches of old trees. They occur 
singly in the axils of the leaves. The twigs arc gray-green, slender, very slightly angled when young, with 
scattered stomates at the base of deep, narrow pits, and two or more layers of palisade cells below the very 
thick-walled epidermis. The flowers occur singly or two or three together in the axils of the leaves and are 
borne on slender pedicels about as long or slightly longer than the petals. (See Fig. 1.) The calyx is 3- 
to 5-lobed ; the petals, four or five, rarely three in number, are more or less narrowed at the base ; the 
stamens are normally four times as numerous as the petals, with the filaments free. The ovary is obovate, 
with a rather thick subcylindric, caducous style, 4- or 5-celled, with two ovules in each cell ; the disk 
is small. The fruits are 1 to 2| by 1J to 1J cm. smaller than those of any known species of Citrus 
subglobose, oval or somewhat pyriform, with a thin fleshy peel, like that of a lime, covered with oil glands. 
The pulp is vesicular, sour, and juicy. The pulp vesicles, which separate easily in the ripe fruit (fig. 2, A-D) 
are subglobose, and arc borne on slender stalks. The seeds arc small (5 to 6 by 3 to 4 by 2i to 3 mm.), 
pointed ovate, yellowish gray with a hard testa, irregularly verrucose and furrowed in a longitudinal 
direction. (S:e fig. 2, E.) The cotyledons are plano-convex, remaining hypogcous in germination; the 
postcotyledonary leaves arc slender cataphylls (fig. 3\ 
This monotypic genus is based on Triphasia glauca Lindl., native to the drier parts of north-eastern 
Australia. 
See also L. H. Bailey's " Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture," vol. ii, p. 1127 
(1914), where there is an abbreviated description, accompanied by figures of a spiny 
twig of a young seedling, and of a fruit, entire and in cross-section. 
