[Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia by Ludwig Leichhardt]@TWC D-Link bookJournal of an Overland Expedition in Australia CHAPTER VI 39/41
At some old camping places of the natives, we found the seed-vessels of Pandanus, a plant which I had never seen far from the sea coast; and also the empty shells of the seeds of a Cycas.
Mr.Calvert, John Murphy, and Brown, whom I had sent to collect marjoram, told me, at their return, that they had seen whole groves of Pandanus trees; and brought home the seed-vessel of a new Proteaceous tree.
I went to examine the locality, and found, on a sandy and rather rotten soil, the Pandanus abundant, growing from sixteen to twenty feet high, either with a simple stem and crown, or with a few branches at the top.
The Proteaceous tree was small, from twelve to fifteen feet high, of stunted and irregular habit, with dark, fissured bark, and large medullary rays in its red wood: its leaves were of a silvery colour, about two inches and a half long, and three-quarters broad; its seed-vessels woody and orbicular, like the single seed-vessels of the Banksia conchifera; the seeds were surrounded by a broad transparent membrane.
This tree, which I afterwards found every where in the neighbourhood of the gulf of Carpentaria, was in blossom from the middle of May to that of June.
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