390 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
The same irregularity occurs in the disk, which is nearly or quite 
absent behind, and is only represented by the two anterior glands.’ 
Finally Bellendena, whose flower becomes nearly regular, has no hypo- 
gynous disk at all. Its ovules are orthotropous, descending, but 
placed one above the other, or nearly so, and the dry indehiscent fruit 
is surmounted by a sort of hook formed by the persistent base of 
the style. 
II. BANKSIA SERIES. 
Banksia’ (figs. 227-231) has regular hermaphrodite flowers. The 
perianth consists of four valvate leaves, free or united below. As 
in all the preceding genera the four stamens are inserted on the 
concavity near the summit of the perianth-leaves; they are almost 
reduced to their two-celled introrse anthers, which dehisce by two 
longitudinal slits.* The gyneceum, surmounted by four hypogynous 
glands, consists of a sessile biovulate ovary surmounted by a long 
slender style with a stigmatiferous apex. Next come the characters 
which have led authors to make Banksia the type of a separate series 
or tribe. The posterior parietal placenta bears two collateral ascending 
subanatropous ovules, whose micropyles look downwards and outwards. 
The fruit (figs. 230, 231) is compound ; the common axis of the inflo- 
rescence becomes thick and woody so as to form a sort of cone or elon- 
gated strobilus, bearing a large number of woody follicles, surrounded 
by the remains of the flowers and half sunk in the substance of the 
rachis. Hach follicle, compressed and bivalve, opens by a usually trans- 
verse or oblique cleft; and is divided into two half-cells by a free bifid 
1 Adenostephanus (Ku., in Linnea, xv. 51; 
—ENDL., Gen., n. 2149; —Metssn., Prodr., 
436 ;— Euplassa Sauiss.; Dickneckeria VELLOZ., 
Fl. Flumin., 1, t. 105;—Didymanthus Kt.), 
whose fruit is unknown, should we think be placed 
in the genus Guevina, of which it has the leaves 
inflorescence and habit, besides its flowers being 
slightly irregular at the base. The disk, too, 
though described as surrounding the whole 
base of the pistil, is not quite regular; it is cer- 
tainly wanting behind in the few species we have 
been able to examine. Eight species of this ge- 
nus have been described from Brazil and Guiana. 
(See Mrissy., in Mart. Fl. Bras., Prot., 92, t. 
34-36). But here perhaps should be the place for 
Kermadecia (Br. & GR. in Bull. Soc. Bot., x. 
228; in Ann, Sc. Nat., sér. 5, i. 844; in Nouv. 
Arch. Mus., iv. 10, t. 4), of which three species 
are known, all from New Caledonia, They have the 
flowers of Guevina, with a perianth of oblique 
insertion and a nearly semicircular anterior disk. 
The leaves are simple, as in Andripetalum and 
certain species of Roupala; but this last charac- 
ter cannot be of generic value. The fruit is but 
little known; probably indehiscent, as in Guevina, 
2 L. ¥., Suppl., 127 (nec Forst., nec Bruce, 
nec Doms., nec Ka@y.)—Lamx., Dict., i. 368,— 
R. Br., in Trans. Linn. Soc., x. 202 ; Prodr., 
891; Suppl, 34.—EnDL., Gen, u. 2157,— 
Mrissy., Prodr., 451. 
3 R. Brown has described the pollen of several 
Banksias as consisting of elliptical grains. 
