Pittosporece.\ 
THE COLONY OE VICTORIA. 
75 
easily separable by pressure. Funicles very short. Seeds brown, smooth, opaque, nearly kidney-shaped, 
1 |- 1 | line long, extremely finely reticulated. Hilum lateral. 
The lower page of the leaves and the ovary are almost constantly clothed with subtle down, wherever 
the plant occurs in the diy tropical or the southern desert tracts. In this colony it may be'seen also beyond 
the desert in this state on the Snowy River. The Bursaria spinosa passes here amongst colonists in some * 
districts under the very inappropriate names of Native Myrtle and Box-tree. 
In flower chiefly during the summer, although some flowers may be gathered at all seasons. 
RHYTIDOSPORUM. 
F. 31. First Gen. Report on the Veg. of Viet . p. 10. 
Sepals free. Petals equal, divergent, not imguiculate. Stamens unconnected. Anther-cells 
bursting lengthwise. Style short, filiform. Stigma minute, bilobed. Capsule slightly compressed, 
sessile, tliin-parchmentous, two-celled, exceptionally tliree-celled, bursting to the middle by loculicidal 
and septicidal dehiscence. Seeds turgid, dry, wrinkled, wingless, several almost horizontally arrayed 
in each cell. 
A small herb or low suffruticose never climbing plant, to be found in Eastern extratropical 
and South-Eastern Australia, as also in Tasmania. Leaves alternate, chartaceous or coriaceous, often 
toothed at the apex. Flowers small, axillary and terminal, solitary, less frequently twin or temate. 
Petals white, not rarely tinged with red. Capsule didymous- or kidnej^shaped-orbicular, rather small, 
nodding. 
Rhytidosporum, although as regards its flowers referable to Bursaria, differs essentially in its 
fruit, by which to a certain degree the contact 'with Pittosporum, and 'with that section of Marianthus 
designated as Oncosporum, is effected. In habit it differs totally from any of the known Pittospo- 
raceous genera. 
Hhytidosporum procumbens, F. 31. First Gen. Rep. p. 10; Pittosporum procumbens, Hook, in 
Comp, to the Rot. 31ag. i. 275; P. nanum, Hooh. 1. c. ; Bursaria procumbens, Putt. Syn. Pitt. 20; J. Hook. 
FI. Tasm. i. 39 5 B. cliosmoides, Putt. Syn. Pitt. 20; B. Stuartiana, Klatt in Linncea } xxviii. 568 ,• Pronaya 
ericoides, IAndl. in 31itch. Three Fxped. ii. 227. 
On barren forest-ridges and heath-ground, by no means common in the Colony of Victoria; noticed 
on Mount William, in the Black Forest, near Forest Creek, around Port Albert, on the Rivers La Trobe and 
Tarwin and in the Bogong Ranges. Further known from many parts of Tasmania and New South Wales, 
advancing northward, according' to Dr. Beckler’s observations, as far as the tributaries of the Clarence River. 
An erect, diffuse, ascendent or procumbent plant, from 2 inches to 1 foot high, producing a solitary or 
several or many stems from each root. The latter, according to the age of the plant, slender, flexuose and 
simple, or thick and woody. Branches spreading, sparingly clothed with white crisp downs. Leaves rather 
crowded, subsessile, linear- or cuneate- or oblong- or ovate-lanceolate, promiscuously entire and with a few 
either faint or coarse serratures toothed towards the summit, flat or more frequently recurved or revolute at 
the margin, acute and minutely cuspidate, 2-7 lines long, 1-2 lines broad, shining above, hardly paler 
beneath, somewhat downy in a young state, glabrous in age $ the middle nerve barely visible at their surface. 
Peduncles none. Pedicels filiform, downy, when flower-bearing 1—2 lines long, when fruit-bearing some¬ 
what longer and very recurved. Bracteoles solitary, situated generally towards the base of the pedicel, 
linear-subulate, 1-2 lines long, slightly downy. Sepals lanceolate- or linear-subulate, 1-1A occasionally 2 
lines long, dropping simultaneously with the corolla. Petals oblong-lanceolate, acute, glabrous, 2-3 hues 
long, one-nerved, finely veined, membranous. Filaments white, 1-1 \ line long, subulate, attenuated at the 
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