62 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



stamens covered by the petals and flowers united in capitules 

 accompanied by imbricate and persistent bracts. They are from 

 extra- tropical Australia, as are also Cryptandra and Stenanthemum, 

 But in these last two genera, the receptacle is prolonged in a neck 

 above the ovary, before bearing the perianth and androecium. Stenan- 

 themum is distinguished by its inflorescence which is that of 

 Spyridium^ whilst Cryptandra has sessile or shortly pedicellate 

 flowers, surrounded at the base by brown persistent bracts. They 

 are solitary along the small divisions of inflorescence or grouped in 

 short ears, intermixed with leaves, but they are never seen dis- 

 posed in capituliform cymes, as in Spyridium, Like many other 

 genera of the same family, they are in other respects by no means 

 clearly separated from each other. 



III. COLLETIA SEEIES. 



In Colletia^ (fig. 57), the flowers are regular and hermaphrodite. 

 The perianth, often simple, petaloid,^ has the form of a tube or 

 small elongated bell, the cupuliform base of which, covered with 

 a disk, supports the gynsecium, and its summit is divided into four 

 or five valvate^ lobes. In the hollows are sometimes inserted an 

 equal number of small petals, superposed to which are as many 

 stamens similarly inserted and formed of a free filament^ and an 

 introrse anther.^ The two cells open by longitudinal clefts which 

 often become confluent above. The cupule of the disk, about which 

 there was recently some question, is occasionally thin and scarcely 

 visible.^ Oftener, its upper margin is incurved or involute on the 

 side of the gynaecium. The latter consists of an ovary in great part 

 free, but adnate to the concavity of the receptacle in its lower portion, 

 trilocular, and surmounted by a style the stigmatiferous summit of 

 which is dilated to a three-lobed head.^ In each ovarian cell there 



1 CoMMERS. ex J. Gen. 380. — Lamk. ///. Poiceacece and other neighbouring groups, 

 t. 129. — PoiR. Diet. Suppl. ii. 311 (part.). — "* Below the point where they become free, 

 DC. Prodr. ii. 28 (part.). — Ad. Br. Rhamn. 58 these filaments are traceable on the tube, 

 (part.), t. 3. — Endl. Gen. n. 5730. — Miers, ^ Included or sometimes a little exserted. 

 Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 3, v. 203; Gontrib. i. 251, ^ In the Scijpharia (Miers. Ami. Nat. Eiit. 

 t. 34-36.— B. H. Qen. 383, n. 28.— H. Bx. ser. 3, vi. 8 ; Gontrib. i. 299, t. 42), placed here 

 Payer Fam. Nat. 330. with some doubt. 



2 White, generally scented. 7 Sometimes at the swoUen summit of the 

 ' These alone perhaps are the representatiTes hollow style, six lobes may be observed, three 



of the calyx, the remainder belonging to the of which, very small, alternate with the three 



receptacle, and perhaps it is the same in the larger. 



