Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia — Vol. 2: Performed between the years 1818 and 1822King, Philip Parker
History
Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia — Vol. 2: Performed between the years 1818 and 1822
King, Philip Parker
Australia -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Australia
A Tragia (scarcely distinct from a species indigenous in India) is
sparingly scattered on the East and North Coasts; and Acalypha has been
remarked on these, as well as the north-western shores.
PITTOSPOREAE. Of this small family, whose characters and limits were
first described by Mr. Brown, there are sixteen species in the Herbarium
of these voyages, referable to Bursaria, Billardiera, Pittosporum, and
two unpublished genera.
Billardiera, whose species are wholly volubilous, and which are not found
north of the parallel of Port Jackson, is frequent on the South-west
Coast, and has been recently remarked on the West Coast of Van Diemen's
Land. Bursaria on the other hand, appearing limited to New South Wales,
has been traced within the tropic to latitude 19 degrees South on those
eastern shores, and although the genus Pittosporum is even more
extensively diffused on that coast, it has not been met with upon the
north-western shores, whilst the islands off the West Coast furnished me
with two new species.
DIOSMEAE, although very frequent in the higher latitudes of Terra
Australis, where they are so frequent as to give a peculiar character to
their vegetable productions, is comparatively rare within the tropic; for
upon the East Coast Eriostemon and Phebalium appear to be the only
genera, the latter having been recently discovered, in about latitude 20
degrees South.
With some undescribed species of Boronia, a new genus allied to
Eriostemon has been observed on the north-western shores, in the parallel
of 15 degrees South, having a remarkable pinnatified fimbriated calyx.
Of the related family ZYGOPHYLLEAE (an order proposed by Mr. Brown to be
separated from the Rutaceae of Jussieu) Tribulus is frequent on the
tropical shores of New Holland, and a species of Zygophyllum, with linear
conjugate leaves and tetrapterous fruit, was remarked upon an island off
Shark's Bay, on the West Coast.
MELIACEAE. The several genera of this order, whose maximum is in the
equinoctial parts of America, differ from each other in the form of the
remarkable cylindrical nectarium, the situation or insertion of the
antherae upon it, as well as the character of its almost wholly capsular
fruit. This structure of nectarium is most striking in Turraea, of which
a species was observed upon the East Coast, far within the tropic; where
also, as well as on all the other equinoctial shores of the continent,
Carapa, more remarkable on account of the valvular character of its
capsules, and the magnitude and irregular figure of its nuts, is very
general, and probably not distinct from the plant (C. moluccensis, Lam.)
of Rumphius, who has given us a figure in his Herbarium Amboinense volume
3 table 61, 62.
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