Bæckia with linear-lanced leaves with transparent dots; the flowerstalks axillary, and bearing umbels.
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. A petal.
2. The chives and pointal.
3. The same shown from the under side.
In the Island of New Caledonia, celebrated by Captain Cook (above all others) for the courteous, friendly, and honest disposition of the men, and the inflexible virtue of the females, (see his Second Voyage, vol. ii. p. 105 to 127.) and whence every day brought them something new in natural history, this plant with many others was discovered by the two Forsters, who accompanied him as naturalists, and is published in their Genera of Plants gathered in the Islands of the South Seas as a species of Leptospermum. Dr. Smith, however, justly observes, that neither the number of stamens, the fruit, nor the opposite leaves, agree at all with that genus, but most naturally with the Linnean genus Bæckia, of which several species have lately been found in New Holland. The stamens vary from eight to ten; the germen three-celled, with about sixteen seeds in each; but how many of these ripen we have had no opportunity of observing. The leaves are not absolutely without nerves, as described by Forster; we find them faintly three-nerved in his own specimen, but they are more conspicuously so after they become dry, particularly on the under side. In the specimens with which we have been favoured by Mr. Milne from Fonthill, the leaves are a little smaller than those upon the original specimen, which may be occasioned by this plant’s being yet so young, being raised only three years ago in the collection of the Marquis of Bath. The time of flowering is October. The Leptospermum virgatum of Willdenow we cannot quote, his descriptions being from two plants of very different genera jumbled together into one species.
In the 277th Number of The Botanical Magazine the writer, endeavouring to destroy the authority of the figure of Yucca gloriosa in The Botanist’s Repository, vol. vii., and establish that of his own as the first, says that our figure cannot belong to that plant, in which “the trunk reaches only from six inches to two feet (Miller says in his Dictionary, from two feet and a half to three feet!) in height, and where the leaves are quite entire; but to Y. aloifolia, whose trunk reaches from 6 to 10 feet in height, and the leaves have a finely crenulate edging.” Our drawing was taken at Lord Boston’s from a plant only ten feet high, the stem little more than three, and the leaves not in the least crenated! The panicle in our figure is also said to be much closer than in that, with its branches likewise more lax and drooping. With all these contradictory qualities, however, it very much resembles Barreliere’s figure of the same, which the writer himself has quoted, and in which the curvature of the buds, which he holds to be so extraordinary, is also conspicuous. No less curious is his objection to the tinge of purple on the flowers. Could it be possible that he had not seen either the plant that he way describing or the drawing of it? (See the figure in The Botanical Magazine.) But we leave the Yuccas to speak for themselves. The filamentosa he has also complimented with five feet of a stem (Botanical Magazine, No. 900), and quoted Micham’s authority for it, although that author expressly says that it is stemless!
