2-10 
lioUinictll description. Species glauca Swingle, op. r.it. p. 88. 
Following is the original description : 
This species, the desert kumquat, desert lemon, or desert lime of the Australian pioneers, is a shrub 
or small tree, sometimes attaining a height of 15 feet and a diameter of 6 inches (Maiden,* 1889, p. 37!l). 
When young, the branches arc very spiny and the leaves are very narrow. As the tree gets older, the 
leaves become broader and more abundant, and the spines arc much reduced or entirely wanting (Campbell.f 
1899, p. 1168, fig. 5). 
The leaves of mature plants are oblong linear or elongate cuneate, bluntly rounded, retuse or 
emarginatc at the tip, with undulate entire margins, 25 to 45 by 4 to 10 mm., mostly 30 to 40 by 6 to 8 mm. 
They show on both surfaces minute (about f v mm. long), scattered, appressed few-celled hairs, with a 
warty cuticle. The leaves are para-heliotropic (standing more or less on edge), very thick, prominently 
glandular dotted, and taper gradually into very short wingless petioles. 
The spines, which are always single, are slightly to one side of the axil of the leaf and are usually 
very slender, 2 to 4 cm. long and only 1 J to 2 mm. in diameter. On old trees, especially on fruiting branches, 
they arc often wanting. 
The flowers are borne cither singly or in groups of two or three in the axils of the leaves on new growth 
as in Citrus. The pedicels are slender, 4 to 6 mm. long. The calyx is 3- to 5-lobed, sparsely hairy, 
the lobes acute. The petals are four or five (rarely three) in number, somewhat narrowed at the base, and 
broadly rounded or bluntly pointed at the tip, 4 to 6 mm. long. There are four times as many stamens as 
petals, usually sixteen to twenty, rarely twelve (in trimerous flowers) ; the filaments are slender, about 4 to 
5 mm. long. The pistil is borne on a low disk and has an obovate ovary, with a rather thick sub-cylindric 
style (fig. 4) ; the ovary is 4-, or rarely 3- to 5-celled ; each cell contains two ovules. 
The fruits are small, globose, oblate, or sometimes pyriform, 1| to 2i by 1J to 1 cm., having four 
(rarely three or five) cells filled with subglobose stalked pulp vesicles. The seeds are oval, yellowish gray, 
5 to 6 by 3 to 4 by 2J to 3 mm., with a. tough, longitudinally furrowed, and verrucose testa (see fig. 2). 
The cotyledons are hypogeous in germination, and the young seedlings produce alternate slender cataphylls 
which only very gradually become broader and leaf-like. The young spiny plants, even when several years 
old, usually have only very narrow leaves, differing but slightly from the cataphylls of the young seedlings. 
^C3 fig. 3 ) 
In constituting a variety inermis (of Atcdavtia glauca), F. M. Bailey in Quee.nsL 
Agric. Journ., Jan. 1915, p. 29, says, " Dr. Lindley, the first botanist to describe the 
species, speaks of the plant as spinous (Mitchell's Trap. Amir., p. 353). Bentham, 
in the " Flora Australiensis," i, p. 370, however, speaks of the plant as ' often armed 
with straight or recurved spines,' and subsequent writers have united the spinous and 
spineless varieties, but I have received specimens of the latter from the above two 
localities and consider it advisable to attach to the latter a distinctive name. Hab. : 
near Dalby, Dr. T. L. Bancroft (September, 1913); Chinchilla, R. C. Beasley (December 
1914)." 
It does not seem expedient, under the circumstances, to attempt to maintain 
the variety. 
Eremocitrus, according to Swingle, is most nearly related to four aberrant species 
of Citrus (now Microcitrm Swingle), viz., australasica F.v.M., Garrmvayi F.v.M., 
auslralis Planch., inodora Bailey (all from coastal New South Wales and Queensland). 
See Swingle in Journ. Agric. Research, ii, 87; Washington Acad. Science, v, 572; Bailey's 
Standard Cyclop, of Hortic., iv, 2047. 
"i TU 
'The Useful Native Plants of Australia." 
;e wo.tern plants; useful, ornamental and curious." (In Agric. Gaz., N.S.\V., v. 10, pt. 11, p. 1107-1169, 
10 fig.). 
