162 
PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO 
[Malvaceae. 
Sect. II. Lawrencia 
Stipules of the upper leaves adnate. Flowers bisexual. Calyx angular. Petals short-exserted. 
Ovules solitary in each cell. Styles at the inner side stigmatose. Carpels secedent. 
Sida Lawrencia. —Lawrencia spicata, Hook . Icon . Plant . 261; L. glomerata, Hoolt. 1. c . 417. 
Herbaceous, smooth or grey velvet-downy; leaves fleshy; lower ones lanceolate- or cuneate- or roundish- 
ovate, long-stalked, serrulate or crenulate or towards the base entire; Jloral leaves connate with the stipules, 
bract-like?j subsessile or short-stalked, ovate- or cuneate- or linear-lanceolate, entire or towards the apex 
toothed; flamers sessile , collected into a simple or glomerate leafy spike; lobes of the calyx almost deltoid, 
nearly as long* as the tube; petals oblique-oblong, truncate or indented at the apex, always glabrous, short 
exserted, broad at the base; free parts of filaments very short, arising from the summit of a short glabrous 
tube; number of anthers not exceeding 20; styles 5, connate only near the base, acute, stigmatose along 
the inner side ; ovaries 5, with single ovules $ carpels 5, glabrous, shorter than the calyx, gibbose, acutangular, 
short-rostrate; pericarp reticulated; seeds glabrous. 
In salt-marshes scattered along the coast; also in dry salt-lagoons and in subsaline places of the north¬ 
western desert of the colony; the glabrous erect variety with simple spikes: on Lake Victoria; at the 
entrance of the Yarra; at Port Pairy (Gunn.); at the mouth of the Glenelg* River (Allitt); beyond the 
Colony of Victoria at Guichen Bay; at Holdfast Bay; at Coffin Bay (Wilhelmi) ; at Trial Bay (Warburton); 
at Hamden in Western Australia (Clarke); in the Sussex district (Preiss.); at Port Gregory (Oldfield); at 
Kelvedon in Tasmania (Backhouse, according to Hooker); on Flinders Island (Milligan); the procumbent 
or ascendent velvet-downy branched variety with glomerate spikes: on the Reedy Lake at the Murray 
River; on Lake Wurringren (Dallachy); at Trial Bay (Warburton); in Western Australia (Drummond). 
A fleshy plant of a grey- or yellowish-green hue. Root seemingly annual, although often thick and 
more or less divided into fibrilliferous branches. Stem attaining the height of frilly 5 feet, although usually 
less high, cylindrical, in most instances between inch thick. Stipules from 1J-3 lines long, rarely longer, 
linear- or semilanceolate-subulate, sometimes (especially in the desert variety) deltoid, the lower less than the 
upper ones adnate to the petioles. Leafstalks semicylindrical, slightly longitudinally furrowed; those of the 
radical and lower stem-leaves from 1-3 inches long. Leaves not much shining, flat, 3-5-nerved; the lower 
ones 1-2 J inches long, blunt at the base and often also at the apex; their form remindings of those of some 
Saxifragae. Floral leaves or bracts always equal in number to the flowers, unless an additional imperfect 
bract exists, §—1 inch long, appressed, sometimes patent, rarely spreading-recurved, tapering to a petiolar 
base, to wdiich the stipules are half-adnate, thus constituting apparently a mere trifid or appendiculate bract 
Bracteoles none. Fiow r ers often singly arranged in a densely cylindrical at first uninterrupted solitary spike 
of a few or many inches length, and thus more or less concealed by the appressed leaf-like bracts; less 
frequently many spikes arising from the leaf-axes of the stem, and producing less copious and more scattered 
flowers; in other instances again by the suppression of development of branchlets tw r o or few flowers crowded 
in apparently the axis of one leaf, each, however, sustended by a special bract or diminutive leaf. Calyx cleft 
to near the middle, turbinate-campanulate, 3—4 rarely only 2 lines long*, at first more or less plicate. Petals 
tender-membranous, pale-yellowish, finely longitudinally veined, about 3 rarely only 2 lines long, connate at 
the broad somewhat imbricate base, and then adnate to the staminal tube, their lowest extremity produced 
into a very minute subulate lacinia. Staminal tube transparent, finely streaked, 1—1 J line long, with exceed- 
short linear-subulate filaments at and immediately below the summit. Anthers yellow, J—J line long, 
with a prominent crescent-shaped but imperfect longitudinal septum ; valves after dehiscence revolute at the 
margins. Pollen-grains globose, armed with very short points. Styles 2-4 lines long, sometimes purplish, 
at other times pale-colored, acute, linear- or setaceous-semicylindrical. Columella persistent, angular-subulate, 
