Abstract
THE Royal Gardens, Kew, have just received, through the kind exertions on their behalf of Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, K.C.M.G., F.R.S., Government Botanist, Melbourne, perhaps the most remarkable Australian Cycadaceous stem which has ever been imported into this country. It is about four feet high, five and a half feet in circumference, and weighs about six hundredweight. It is the type of a new species described by von Mueller as Macrozamia Moorei, in honour of Mr. Charles Moore, F.L.S., the Director of the Botanic Garden, Sydney. The exhibition of two stems (of which that secured for and rent to Kew is one) in the Queensland Court at the Melbourne Exhibition, seems to have drawn attention to the species. The plants appear to have been obtained from the mountainous district near Springsure in Queensland, where specimens have been seen twenty feet in height, with a girth of six feet four inches, cones measuring two to three feet in length, and leaves seven feet long. The stem at Kew has been placed in the Palm House, where it can scarcely fail to be an object of interest. It is in excellent condition, and there is every reason to hope that it will in time push a new crown of leaves. But even if it does not it will at any rate form, as Sir Ferdinand von Mueller has suggested, a unique museum specimen.
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Notes . Nature 24, 425–428 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024425b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024425b0
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