Page:A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland.djvu/48

 by no means be admitted into the class Diadelphia, but must come next to Sophora in that of Decandria. The plant before us is one among several species which constitute one of the most distinct of these genera, and to which we have given the name of Pultenæa in order to commemorate the merits of a very amiable and deserving English Botanist, Dr. Richard Pulteney, F.R. and F.L.S, of Blandford in Dorsetshire, well known by his Sketches of the Progress of Botany in England, and more especially by his Biography of Linnæus.

This genus differs materially from the true Sophoræ, in having a roundish pod of one cell, and only two seeds, instead of a long many-seeded pod divided into numerous cells; and although many of the Cape Sophoræ do indeed approach Pultenæa in their fruit, the last mentioned genus is essentially distinguished from them, and all others we have hitherto seen, by the two appendages to the calyx, affixed either to its base or sides.

We received a living specimen of this plant from Mr. Alexander Murray, gardener to Benjamin Robertson, Esq. at Stockwell, who raised it late in the autumn of 1792 from seeds brought from New South Wales. It first flowered in April 1794.

The stem is shrubby, variously branched, round; the wood hard and whitish; bark brown, covered more or less with withered bristly stipulæ: branches long and straight, pointing upwards, clothed with leaves, and terminated by round heads of handsome yellow inodorous flowers. The leaves surround the branches in great