316 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



trees or shrubs inhabiting, to the number of about twenty-five species,* 

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



Lsptospermumflavescens. 



Bceckea 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 1-3-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 iep- 

 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.* 



Bceckea (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 Leptospermum ; but they are im- 

 mediately distinguished from the latter by their leaves being opposite 



1 Cat. Icon. t. 330.— Vent. Malmais. t. 88, 89. 3419. 



Sm. Trans. Linn. Soc. m. 260. — Hook. Icon. t. ^ Small wliite or sHghtly pink. 



308, 893. — Hook. p. M. Taam. t. 30. — Bbnth. s Themselves formed of glomerules, so that 



Fl. Austral, iii. 100. — Bot. Maq. 1810, 2695, the inflorescence is mixed. 



Fig. 294. Floriferous 

 hranoh. 



