Page:A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland.djvu/8

 less conspicuously interesting objects. Nor will the scientific botanist find the plant before us unworthy of his most accurate attention.

Its genus is easily characterised in the Linnæan system by the many-seeded berry above the flower, and may stand somewhere between Escallonia and Mangifera. We cannot certainly tell what genera are its natural allies, especially as we have no knowledge of the fruit and seeds except from a drawing. May it be akin to the Capparides of M. de. Jussieu?

The name Billardiera is given it in honour of James Julian la Billardiere, M.D. F.M.L.S. now engaged as botanist on board the French ships sent in search of M. de la Peyrouse. His Icones Plantarum Syriæ rariorum, the fruits of a journey to the Levant in 1786, justly entitle him to such a distinction.

We have acquired two species of this genus from New South Wales. The root of the present is woody and zigzag, with a reddish inner bark. Stems several, twining among other shrubs, branched, woody, round, downy when young, destitute of leaves except on the young branches. Leaves alternate, sessile, lanceolate, bluntish, mostly entire, but undulated and revolute in such a manner as to appear dentated, which they sometimes really are, paler beneath, slightly veined, most hairy when young. Stipulæ none. Flowers solitary, enveloped in long leaves, terminating the young branches, on short downy footstalks, drooping, of a pale lemon-colour,

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