Aboriginal Australians -- Government relations; Dunk Island (Qld.); Natural history -- Australia -- Queensland
With the grey-green of the Sophora is often intertwined the leafless
creeper CASSYTHA FILIFORMIS, which in the days of the past the blacks
were wont to use with other beach plants in the composition of a crude
seine net. The long-reaching, white-flowered CLERODENDRON INERME and the
tough, sprawling BLAINVILLEA LATIFOLIA, with its small, harsh flowers,
yellow as buttercups but resembling a daisy in form, were also embodied
in the net.
The Poonga oil-tree, the new and old leaves the colour of new copper,
and the mature the darkest of green, bears spikes of pale lavender
flowers, and makes a decided blotch among the light green succulent
leaves of the native cabbage (SCAEVOLA KOENIGII), with its strange white
flowers and milk-white fruit. All parts of the plant are said to be
emetic.
Two varieties of VITEX TRIFOLIA, each bearing pretty lavender flowers,
but in other respects sharply contrasted, are among the commonest of
denizens of the beach. The one is a prostrate plant with sage-coloured
and sage-scented leaves; the other a shrub or small tree with light
green foliage, the underside of which is mealy-white, and flowers paler
than those of its lowly kin. Each is pretty, and the creeping variety
(known in Egypt as the “Hand of Mary”) decidedly one of the most eager
lovers of the sand, to which it keeps strictly.
Almost within reach from high water are representatives of a tall,
shining-leaved shrub known as MORINDA CITRIFOLIA, the flower-heads of
which merge into a berry which has a most disagreeable odour and a still
more objectionable flavour. It is related that when La Perouse was cast
away on one of the islands of the South Pacific, a native undertook
to ward off the pangs of hunger by converting the fruit into an
edible dish. But his manipulation seemed but to intensify original
nauseousness, and the brave Frenchman and his companions found
semi-starvation more endurable than the repugnant mess.
Magnificent representatives of the umbrella-tree (BRASSAIA
ACTINOPHYLLA), unique among the many novelties of the tropical coast,
are massed in groups or stand in solitary grace close to the sea.
Queensland has a monopoly over this handsome and remarkable tree, the
genus to which it belongs being limited to a single species occurring
nowhere else in a native state. Discovered by Banks and Solander at
Cooktown in 1770, the second record of its existence, it is believed,
was made from specimens obtained on this island by Macgillivray and
Huxley in 1848. Possibly the very trees which attracted their attention
still crown their rayed and glossy leaflets with long, radiating rods
thickly set with red, stud-like flowers. Such foliage and such flowers
would appeal gloriously to an enthusiastic botanist, and to so devoted,
indefatigable, and successful a searcher after the wonders and the
higher truths of the world as Huxley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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