256 
No. 254 
Canthium olei folium Hook. 
A Wild Lemon. 
(Family RUBIACEyE.) 
Botanical description. -Genus Canthium Lamarck, Encyd. method, I, 602 (1783). 
Calvx-limb short, more or less toothed. Corolla-tube short or cylindrical; lobes four or five, 
valvate in'thebud. Anthers exuertcd or rarely included in the tube. Ovary 2-celled, with one ovule in 
each cell, laterally attached near or at the top. Style cxscrtcd, with a thick ovoid or mitre-shaped entire 
or 2-lobed stigma. Fruit a globular compressed or didymous drupe, with one or two 1-seeded pyrenes. 
Shrubs either unarmed or with axillary thorns. Stipules intcrpetiolar, pointed, with a broad base. Flowers 
in axillary cymes or clusters. (B.F1. iii, 121 .) 
Botanical description. -Species oleifolium Hooker, in Mitchell's " Tropical Aus- 
tralia," p. 397. 
The original reference is llth December, 1816, " . . . a new Canthium was in fruit." The 
footnote is " C. oleifolium Hook., M.S. Foliis obovato-oblongis obtusis glaucis basi in petiolum gracilem 
attenuatis, stipulis parvis acutis, fructibus didymis." 
Bentham described it more fully in the following words : 
A tall glabrous shrub, sometimes glaucous, a few branchlets occasionally degenerating into short 
spines. 
Leaves oblong, obtuse, narrowed into a short petiole, rarely above 1J inch long in the flowering 
specimens, larger in barren ones, thick and smooth but scarcely shining, the veins usually inconspicuous. 
Flowers in short almost sessile r.xlllary cymes, rather smaller than in C. lucidum, and varying in the 
number of parts four or five. 
Corolla tube nearly as long as the lobes, the flowers otherwise the same as in C. lucidum. 
Fruit also the same, didymous when both carpels ripen. (B.F1. iii., 422.) 
Mr. R. T. Baker and I described a variety pedunculatum as follows : 
' This variety differs from the normal species in having peduncles sometimes 
over an inch long, instead of ' flowers in short, almost sessile, axillary cyrr.es.' This 
variety is from Condobolin, N.S.W." (Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., XIX, 460.) 
Botanical Name. Canthium, from a Malabar (India) vernacular name Cantix; 
oleifolium, Latin, with leaf resembling that of an Olive (Olea). 
