42 University of California Publications in Botany. [VOL. 4 



short-stalked or sessile, serrate with remote sharp slender teeth or entire, 

 several inches to 1 ft. or more long: flowers small, in long racemes, 

 growing in pairs on short stalks: ovary simple, developing into a hard- 

 shelled ovoid nut with a leathery covering. Family Proteaceae. Australia. 



Valuable chiefly because of its nuts, this tree also deserves 

 consideration as an ornamental. It is a clean, straight-growing, 

 pleasing tree, without objectionable features, and is suggested 

 as a specimen tree for parks and large gardens and also as a 

 nut tree, both for commercial plantations and for the home 

 orchard. 



Specimens are growing at San Francisco and Berkeley, but 

 none* of these have yet blossomed, so far as I am aware. This 

 may be due to excessive shading or crowding or to unfavorable 

 soil conditions. At Santa Barbara we find several splendid 

 trees. One of these, now about five years old, is 15 feet high 

 and bearing nuts, although it has had no attention. Another, 

 on the Gillespie grounds at Montecito, is eleven years old and 

 has borne several crops. This tree, although on poor soil and 

 much crowded, is now about 50 feet high and still growing. 

 Some of its branches are 10 feet long, the lower ones sweeping 

 the ground, the shorter upper ones ascending, the whole ap- 

 pearance being that of a thrifty, well established specimen, a 

 credit to any garden. 



The flowers appear in December and the blooming period 

 extends into March, the nuts ripening the next autumn. These 

 nuts are borne in long, pendant racemes of 6 to 24 nuts each. 

 Only the larger ones are fertile and the extremely hard shell 

 renders the cracking of the nuts a difficult operation. They 

 resemble filberts somewhat in appearance and taste but are said 

 to excel all other nuts in flavor and to sell in the English market 

 at $2.50 per pound. In Australia the price averages $1.25 per 

 pound, when sold for propagation purposes. Australian writers 

 inform us, further, that the trees are there planted 20 feet 

 apart, attain a height of 50 feet, come into bearing when seven 

 years old, and yield 3 to 14 nuts to each raceme. It Avould 

 seem that some parts of California are fully as well adapted 

 to the tree as any part of Australia, where the production of 

 its nuts is considered to be very remunerative. 



