318 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



at the base, and others where they are quite free, and yet we cannot 

 separate generically one from the other. Hence the impossibility we 

 find of retaining as a distinct genus M. paludosa and some neigh- 

 bouring species separated under the name of Callistemon. On the 

 other hand, the staminal bundles are often united together at the base 

 in a very short tube. This tube is exceptionally prolonged in 

 Lamarcheaj which we make only a section of Melaleuca, This belongs 

 to tropical Asia and Oceania. Beaufort ia, all Australian, has the 

 flower of Melaleuca^ with the stamens united in oppositipetalous 

 bundles ; but the anthers are basifixed instead of being versatile as 

 in the preceding genera. They open by clefts longitudinal or short 

 and near the summit, sometimes reduced to pores. The ovarian cells 

 enclose one or from two to four ovules, of which several may remain 

 sterile or disappear altogether. In Calothamnus, the foliage, the 

 habit, the mode of inflorescence are all those of Beaufortia^ and the 

 anthers are basifixed, oblong or linear, with parallel cells, dehiscing 

 internally by longitudinal clefts. The ovules are numerous in each 

 cell, with all the varieties of placentation observed in Melaleuca. 

 They are all from western Australia, as are those of Eremcea, only 

 artificially separated, which have flowers solitary or two or three in 

 number towards the summit of the branches, instead of lateral and 

 sessile, like those of Calothamnus^ and short basifixed stamens, with 

 exterior longitudinal clefts. Kunzea may have the inflorescence of 

 Eremcea, or capitules with flowers more or less numerous. The flower 

 is nearly the same ; but the receptacular tube, more elongate and 

 lined by a disk of circular border, bears, exterior to the latter, 

 numerous free stamens, like those of Callistemon, with versatile 

 anthers, not basifixed as those of Eremcea, They form a transition 

 therefore between this group and the following (Metrosiderece), of 

 which they often have the flower. 



Tristania alone among them has pentadelphous stamens, the 

 bundles being oppositipetalous, sometimes short, sometimes longer 

 than the corolla. The ovary, totally or only partly inferior, has three 

 cells the ovules in which are indefinite in number ; and, as in the 

 greater part of the preceding genera, the placenta? which bear them 

 are very variable in form, sometimes consisting of thick vertical cords, 

 sometimes peltate and supported by a transverse or slightly oblique 

 foot, with a head the periphery of which bears reflexed ovules. The 

 fruit is a capsule, exserted or enclosed, loculicidal, with seeds 



