Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Tropic Days by E. J. (Edmund James) Banfield
page 48 of 287 (16%)
silvery, dangling threads, which speedily lengthen and become constricted.
When the breeze flusters the shrubs, revealing the undersides of the
leaves at a reflective angle and shaking the tasselled pods, and the
splashes of gold sway hither and thither, the character of the shrub as
one of the most attractive ornaments of the beach is so truly displayed
that it might be likened to the tree of the sun described by Marco
Polo--green on one side, but white when perceived on the other.

This quality, however, is not special or peculiar. The brown kurrajong
(COMMERSONIA ECHINATA) exhibits it even more conspicuously, and, when the
dusty white flowers--displayed in almost horizontal planes--are buffeted
by the winds and the white undersides of the leaves are revealed, the
whole style of the tree is transformed as a demure damsel is by
tempestuous petticoats.

With the grey-green of the Sophora is often intertwined the leafless
creeper CASSYTHA FILIFORMIS, which in the days of the past the blacks
were wont to use with other beach plants in the composition of a crude
seine net. The long-reaching, white-flowered CLERODENDRON INERME and the
tough, sprawling BLAINVILLEA LATIFOLIA, with its small, harsh flowers,
yellow as buttercups but resembling a daisy in form, were also embodied
in the net.

The Poonga oil-tree, the new and old leaves the colour of new copper, and
the mature the darkest of green, bears spikes of pale lavender flowers,
and makes a decided blotch among the light green succulent leaves of the
native cabbage (SCAEVOLA KOENIGII), with its strange white flowers and
milk-white fruit. All parts of the plant are said to be emetic.

Two varieties of VITEX TRIFOLIA, each bearing pretty lavender flowers,
DigitalOcean Referral Badge