Sterculiuceco .] 
THE COLONY OE VICTORIA. 
157 
provided with stalks of about 1 inch length, inside densely clothed with grey-fulvous branched or stellate 
hah*. Seeds 6-16, hardly \ inch long, obovate, tapering towards the base. Outer testa thin, yellowish, 
shining, laxly adherent to the inner integument, from which it is separated by a yellow when moistened paste¬ 
like powder, bursting by transverse irregular rupture $ the seed when thus free from the outer cover exactly 
egg-shaped and 3-4 lines long. Inner integument or mesosperm of the seed bony, black, brown, smooth, 
3-4 lines long. Clialaza black, orbicular, measuring nearly 1J line. Endopleura whitish, closely adherent 
to the albumen, not to the mesosperm. Albumen amygdaloid. Radicle hardly 1 line long, lodged in the 
small sinus of the cotyledons. The latter inseparable from the albumen, although readily from each other, 
dividing the albumen into two parts, giving it the deceptive appearance of amygdaloid cotyledons. 
Supplemental Plate V. 1, side view of stamens of male flowers; 2, moistened terminal portion of 
the stamens, bent outward to show the barren pistil; 3, front view of a staminal phalanx; 4, back view of 
the same; 5, anthers; 6, dry pollen-grains; 7, moist pollen-grains; 8, pistils, surrounded by stamina; 9, 
three pistils separated; 10, transverse section of ovaries; 11, side view of a seed; 12, seed viewed from the 
base; 13, superior part of ruptured testa; 14, seed, showing the hilum; 15, seed, showing the chalaza; 16, 
seed, showing the raphe; 17, longitudinal section of seed, showing radicle and face of cotyledons; 18, 
longitudinal section of seed, showing albumen and edges of longitudinally cut cotyledons; 19, transverse 
section of seed; 20, ramified hair: figs. 1-10 and 20 variously magnified; figs. 11-19 natural size . 
Our plant bears to B. diversifolium from Arnhem's Land the closest alliance. The latter is distinguished 
by a black more wrinkled and rimose bark, by always lobeless generally cordate-ovate and long-acuminate 
more deciduous leaves, by somewhat smaller outside velvet-hairy flowers, by the conspicuous hairiness of the 
base of the staminal column, by usually less numerous anthers and by densely tomentose ovaries with shorter 
styles. In consistence of leaves and color of flowers both species are similar. Brachychiton acerifolium has 
irrespective of many other characters a somewhat thinner tomentum of the inner sides of the follicles and of 
the outer integument of the seeds. The carpological characters are very similar in both. The foliage of B. 
luridum is nearly deciduous. B. ramiflorum, distributed over a great part of tropical Australia, resembles 
more a Hibiscus, than any of its congeners. It is deciduous-leaved, and oftener shiubby than arborescent 
and never attaining any great height. The large sometimes brilliant sometimes dull-red flowers stand 
occasionally singly. Its follicles are outside velvet-hispid, inside densely starry-tomentose. Brachychiton 
discolor is a large-flowered species, allied to B. ramiflorum. It attains, however, the height of 80 feet, and 
forms thus one of the noblest trees of East Australia; the bristles covering the inner sides of the follicles are 
again less long than in B. populneum. B. platanoides, a species which was noticed by the author of this 
work not only on the Abel Tasman River at the Gulf of .Carpentaria, but also on the Rivers Burdekin and 
Dawson, has larger never undivided leaves. Brachychiton Delabechei (Delabechea rupestris, Mitch. Trop. 
Austr. 154) has leaves promiscuousty simple and compound; the former and the leaflets of the latter are 
broad-linear, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, acute and mucronulate, the leaflets sometimes confluent at the 
base, but there usually overlapping each other; the follicles are only 1—inch long*, hardly longer than 
their stipes, conspicuously rostrate, 6-8-seeded, inside clothed with a short liispidulous toment. The seeds 
are in shape alike to those of its congeners, but measure after the removal of the outer coating only about 
2| lines. B. Gregorii (F. M. in Hook. Journ. 1857, 199) has always simple leaves, deeply cleft into 3-5 
lanceolate-linear acute or acuminate lobes, the basal lobes usually short; the leaves are rarely lobeless and 
then narrow-lanceolate; the follicles are very similar to those of B. Delabechei, rather shorter rostrate and 
inside clothed with somewhat longer hair; the seeds after removal of the exterior coating are only 3 lines 
long; their embiyonic structure is exactly that of Brachychiton. The B. pubescens, from the dry ranges 
beyond Ipswich, is, according to its discoverer, Mr. C. Moore, of Sydney, at once recognized by downy 
trilobed leaves and a pink calyx only J inch long. 
It is not improbable that the tragacanth-like mucilage obtainable from this tree might be turned to 
profitable account. The roasted seeds have been occasionally used by travellers for food. 
