316 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



trees or slirubs inhabiting, to the number of about twenty -five species,' 

 Oceania, and chiefly Australia. The leaves, simple and alternate, 



Leptospcrm nm Jlavcsccmt. 



Bcechea virgata^ 



Fig. 291. Flower (|). Fig. 293. Fruit (f). Fig. 292. Long. sect, of flower. 



often rigid and linear, punctuate and odorous, are destitute of ner- 

 vures or l-S-nerved, glabrous or pubescent. The flowers^ are 

 terminal or nearly so, or axillary, solitary or 

 grouped in small bi- or triflorous cymes, sessile 

 or pedicellate and accompanied by imbricate 

 bracts. 



Agonis, of which some ten Australian species 

 are known, was formerly confounded with Lep- 

 tospermum ; it is distinguished by the stamens, 

 often less numerous, and the ascending ovules, 

 two to four in number, inserted on a placenta 

 itself ascending; differential characters which, 

 in this group, are of very little value, and 

 which, doubtless, we should consider too insig- 

 nificant to establish a distinct genus, if the 

 flowers of Agonis were not grouped in small 

 globular capitules, axillary and terminal.^ 



Bcechea (fig. 294) is also very near Lepto- 

 spermum. It has the flower, with an androecium 

 isostemonous, diplostemonous or formed of from 

 eleven to twenty-five stamens. The ovules are 

 one or two in each cell, oftener indefinite in 

 number, with all the varieties of placentation 

 observed in Lepto spermum ; but they are im- 

 mediately distinguished from the latter by their leaves being opposite 



Fig. 294. Floriferous 

 hrancli. 



1 Cav. Icon. t. 330.— Vent. Malmais. t. 88, 89. 

 — Sm. Trans. Linn. Soc. iii. 260.— Hook. Icon. t. 

 308, 893.— Hook. f. Fl. Tasm. t. 30.— Benth. 

 Fl. Austral, iii. 100.— ^o^. Maq. 1810, 269;^ 



3419. 



2 Small white or slightly pink. 



3 Themselves formed of glomerules, so that 

 the inflorescence is mixed. 



