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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 27

Chenopodium rhadinostachyum

page 98

Chenopodium rhadinostachyum.

Erect; general vestiture of short spreading jointed but not very glandular hair; leaves small, in outline ovate-or rhomboid-lanceolar, with several short rather acute tooth-like lobes, the base gradually tapering into the leafstalk; flowers exceedingly small, clustered into minute glomerules and these again arranged into axillary and terminal simple or branched and soon interrupted spikes; floral leaves reduced to bracts, hardly longer than the clusters, broad towards the base, acute at the apex; sepals deeply concave, but not keeled (while young); stamens one or more in each flower; filaments at length exceeding the sepals; ovary vertical.

Near the Finke-River; Rev. H. Kempe. An annual, pleasantly scented herb, from a few to several inches high. Largest leaves measuring about one inch in length, but most of them smaller. Longest spike attaining four inches, others variously shorter, especially the secondary spikes. Young flowers similar in size and structure to those of C. carinatum, but none seen in an advanced state.—The leafless almost paniculate spikes much like those of C. ambrosioides and of Dysphania plantaginella.

Bertya oppositifolia. — (F. v. M. O'Sitanesy.)—Tall; leaves largo, opposite, oval-or oblong-elliptical, slightly recurved at the margin, above quickly glabrous, beneath as well as the branchlets grey-velvet-downy; flowers of both sexes singly sessile; segments of the calyx four, oval, nearly glabrous, three times as long as the four thereto opposite persistent ovate bracts; column of stamens as long as the calyx; anthers but little longer than broad; styles 3 or oftener 4, dilated at the base, deeply cleft into 2-4 rather long stigmatic lobes; ovary 3-4-celled; fruit ovate-globular, 1-2-seeded, velvet-downy.

At the base of Expedition-Range, Thozet and Kilner; on sand-ridges near the Nogoa-River, rare; P. O'Shanesy.

Length of leaves as great as that of B. Findlayi and B. pedicellata, but width much greater; general vestiture as well as the flowers similar to those of B. oleifolia; division of calyx quaternary as in B. quadrisepalea; position of leaves different from that of any congener, although occasionally opposite leaves may occur in B. oleœfolia also; augmentation of ovary-cells to four likewise exceptional in the genus.

Bertya dimerostigma.—Glabrous; leaves small, scattered, linear, somewhat acute, at the margin refracted to the broad and flat midrib; flowers axillary, sessile, solitary; bracts three times shorter than the calyx, broad-linear, persistent; segments of the calyx five, nearly lanceolar, overlapping at the base, hardly half as long as the fruit; style scarcely any, stigmas 2-3, short, each cleft to the base into only two divisions; fruit ovate, slightly pointed, glabrous.

In desert-country near Victoria-Spring; Giles.

Differs from B. Cunninghami in verrucular not angular branchlets, in shorter pale-green leaves, in absence of distinct stalklets of the flowers, in at the whole lesser stigma-lobes and possibly also in the staminate flowers and seeds, which hitherto remained unknown.

(To be continued).