422 NOTES ON PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO SYDNEY, 



and a-lialf lines in diameter, is nearly or quite globular ; and, so far 

 as I have seen, always closed. The lobes, although divided to fully 

 two-thirds of their whole length, keep so closely together, as to 

 give the flower the appearance of a minute ball that has been cut 

 in different directions across the top, but without causing the 

 parts to gape or separate. If the corolla is taken off one of the 

 most perfect flowers, slit open, and pinned, with insect pins, to a 

 flat piece of cork, it can not only be examined and studied, with 

 the stamens, anthers and pollen together ; but it can be readily 

 transferred to the stage of the microscope. It will be found to 

 have five broadly acute lobes, thick, fleshy, and very concave ; and 

 having the stamens, which rise from the base, closely adnate with 

 the lobes, nearly their whole length ; bearing the anthers deep in 

 the concavities, but sufficiently high on the lobes to be brought, 

 owing to their dome shape, exactly over the stigma. The anthers 

 are very large as compared with the rest of the flower, and 

 peculiarly shaped, very broad at the base and tapering to a point 

 at the apex. In fact, I cannot help comparing them to a chemist's 

 precipitating glass, on a small scale. Owing to this peculiar form, 

 the pollen, which is very dry and loose when fully ripe, falls 

 without being impeded by the walls of the anther ; and this is 

 facilitated by the anther opening, not only in a longitudinal slit, 

 but across the base, and gaping widely, so that it becomes quite 

 empty at once. The style is very short, so that the stigma is 

 almost sessile. Here too a great variation occurs. In those 

 flowers which had imperfect ovaries, and no ovules, I have found 

 the style solid throughout ; but in the perfect flowers, having 

 ovules, it appears to be simply a short hollow tube, with the 

 stigma, marginal. In fact, the ovary and style may aptly be 

 compared with a globular shaped bottle, having a short, wide, open 

 neck, in which case the stigma will answer for the rim or tip of the 

 neck. In several cases I could, with a low power, see through the 

 open tubular style, down into the ovary. I have found the tube 

 partly filled with pollen, and I have also found pollen in the 

 ovary, which must have fallen from the anthers directly through 

 the tubular style. For, sometimes I thought it just possible, 



