176 
PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO 
[Oxalidece. 
Stemless or caulescent herbaceous sometimes frutescent hardly ever truly arborescent plants, 
common in the warmer parts of America and in extratropical Africa, rare in Australia and elsewhere, 
Root various in structure, often bulblike-tuberous. Leaves usually on long and pellucid petioles, 
circinate in vernation. Leaflets 3 or more, terminal, seldom pinnately arranged or geminate or single, 
always entire or at the summit notched, sometimes sensitive. Pedicels bibracteolate. Petals usually 
obovate-cuneate. Capsule herbaceous or membraneous. Seeds often ribbed and rugose.— Jacquin 
Oxalis , 1-119, t. 1-81; Endl. Gen. 1172 ; Biophytum, Cand. Prodr. i. 689. 
Oxalis BEag’ellanica, Forst. Comment . Goetting. ix. 33; JHook. FI. Antarctic, i. 253; FI. of 
New Zeal. i. 42, t. 13; FI. Tasm. i. 59; 0. cataractae, A. Cunn. in Annal. Nat. Hist. in. 315; Hook Icon. 
Plant. 418; 0. lactea, Nook. Journ. of Hot. ii. 416. 
Stemless, downy; rhizome creeping; petioles very long, with oval glabrous membranous base; leaves 
trifoliolate; leaflets broad-obcordate, minutely appendiculate beneath at the summit; peduncles longer than 
the petioles, with two glabrous channelled linear-subulate bracteoles above the middle; sepals oval, imperfectly 
ciliated, about three times shorter than the corolla; petals white, glabrous; filaments longer than the calyx, 
smooth, short-connate at the base; styles glabrous; stigmas simple, convex; cells of the ovary with usually 
three ovules; capsule ovate-globose, blunt, glabrous, less than twice as long as the calyx; seeds usually solitary 
in each cell, turgid, irregularly wrinkled. 
In humid subalpine beech-forests, on springs, and along rivulets and torrents in the western part 
of Gipps Land; thus on the sources of the Yarra, the La Trobe River, the Tyers River, the Tangil, on the 
Baw Baw Mountains and in the Albert Ranges, at elevations from 2500-5000 feet. Pound also in Yew 
Zealand, in Tasmania (where in the southern part of the island it descends to the lowlands), and in the most 
southern tracts of America. 
A neat little herb, usually sparingly downy, attaining a height of about G inches, generally dwarfer, in 
exposed coldest localities only about an inch high. Rhizome brown, descendent or horizontal, more or less 
elongated, producing some slender fibres ; its upper part invested with the relics of vaginae and leafstalks. 
Stems exceedingly short or undeveloped. Petioles pellucid, several or many arising from the summits of the 
rhizome, between f and 3 inches long, dilated at the base into a concurred whitish finally brown at the apex 
bidentate or fornicate vagina of 1|— 6 lines length. Leaflets from 1 J— 8 lines long, above usually glabrous, 
beneath and along the margin appressed- and scattered-hairy, finely nerved and veined, provided with a small 
roundish pale cutaneous terminal appendage, beneath often glaucous or opaque-purplish. Peduncles radical, 
solitary, somewhat longer than the petioles. Bracteoles opposite or alternate, glabrous, membranous, 1-2 
lines long. Sepals 2-3 lines long, green ; the inner ones with a broad membranous margin, the outer ones 
more ciliate, all appressed-hairy at the back. Petals broad obovate-cuneate, yellow towards the base, finely 
anastomosing- veined, more or less ciliolate towards the summit, otherwise smooth. Shorter filaments not 
much longer than the calyx, longer filaments about half as long as the corolla and conspicuously dilated at 
the base; all persistent, whitish, glabrous, capillary. Anthers deciduous, yellow’, cordate-ovate, %-h line long. 
Dry pollen-grains smooth, globular, with three openings. Styles persistent, five, during anthesis extending 
to the height of the longer filaments, capillary, glabrous, about 2 lines long. Ovary glabrous or very slightly 
puberulous. Capsule (according to Tasmanian specimens communicated by the Hon. Will. Archer) glabrous, 
membranous, 2-3 lines long. Consistence of the dehiscent exterior integnunent of the seed between 
cartilaginous and membranous ; its color pale-yellow r ish. Seed after the lapse of the epidermis red-brown, 
about $ line long, ovate-globose, glabrous. Embryo not quite as long as the albumen. Cotyledons broad- 
ovate, flat, as long as the radicle. 
But slight characters exist to separate this species from 0. Acetosella, the Wood-sorrel of Europe. The 
latter is however recognized by no distinctly developed cutaneous concavity at the notch of the leaflets, by 
smaller hairy and more fleshy scales of the rhizome and of the base of the petiole, by hairy bracteoles, by 
