Clianthus Oxleyi A. Cunningham in Hort.  Soc.  Transac.  II. series, vol. 1. p. 522.

Donia speciosa Don, Gen. Syst. vol. 2. p. 468.

Clianthus Dampieri Cunningham, loc. cit.

Colutea Novae Hollandiae, &c.  Woodward in Dampier’s Voy. vol. 3. p. 111. tab. 4. f. 2.

LOC.  “In ascending the Barrier Range near the Darling, about 500 feet above the river.”  D. Sturt.

OBS.  In July, 1817, Mr. Allan Cunningham, who accompanied Mr. Oxley in his first expedition into the Western Interior of New South Wales, found his Clianthus Oxleyi on the eastern shore of Regent’s Lake, on the River Lachlan.  The same plant was observed on the Gawler Range, not far from the head of Spencer’s Gulf by Mr. Eyre in 1839, and more recently by Captain Sturt, on his Barrier Range near the Darling.  I have examined specimens from all these localities, and am satisfied that they belong to one and the same species.

In March (not May) 1818, Mr. Cunningham, who accompanied Captain King in his voyages of survey of the coasts of New Holland, found on one of the islands of Dampier’s Archipelago, a plant which he then regarded as identical with that of Regent’s Lake.  This appears from the following passage of his Ms. Journal:—­

“I was not a little surprised to find Kennedya speciosa, (his original name for Clianthus Oxleyi), a plant discovered in July 1817, on sterile bleak open flats, near Regent’s Lake, on the River Lachlan, in lat. 33 degrees 13 minutes S. and long. 146 degrees 40 minutes E. It is not common, I could see only three plants, of which one was in flower.  This island is the Isle Malus of the French.”  Mr. Cunningham was not then aware of the figure and description in Dampier above referred to, which, however, in his communication to the Horticultural Society in 1834, he quotes for the plant of the Isle Malus, then regarded by him as a distinct species from his Clianthus Oxleyi of the River Lachlan.  To this opinion he was probably in part led by the article Donia or Clianthus, in Don’s System of Gardening and Botany, vol. 2. p. 468, in which a third species of the genus is introduced, founded on a specimen in Mr. Lambert’s Herbarium, said to have been discovered at Curlew River, by Captain King.  This species, named Clianthus Dampieri by Cunningham, he characterises as having leaves of a slightly different form, but its principal distinction is in its having racemes instead of umbels; at the same time he confidently refers to Dampier’s figure and description, both of which prove the flowers to be umbellate, as he describes those of his Clianthus Oxleyi to be.  But as the flowers in this last plant are never strictly umbellate, and as I have met with specimens in which they are rather corymbose, I have no hesitation in referring Dampier’s specimen, which many years ago I examined at Oxford, as well as Cunningham’s, to Clianthus Dampieri.  This specimen, however, cannot now be found in his Herbarium, as Mr. Heward, to whom he bequeathed his collections, informs me:  nor can I trace Mr. Lambert’s plant, his Herbarium having been dispersed.