No. 194. 
Hakea leucoptera R.Br. 
Needlewood. 
(Family PROTEACE^.) 
Botanical description. Genus, Hakea. (See Part XLVI, p. 105.) 
Botanical description. Species, H. leucoptera R.Br., in Trans. Linn. Soc., x, 
180 ; Prod. 382 (1810). 
A shrub or small tree, with rather slender virgate branches, minutely hoary-pubescent. 
Leaves terete, smooth, mucronate with fine straight rigid points, more or less attenuate at the 
base, 1| to 3 inches long. 
Flowers small, in short racemes or clusters pedunculate in the axils or rarely terminating short 
leafy branches, the peduncle and rhachis minutely silky pubescent, i to inch long. 
Pedicels glabrous, 2 to 2J lines long. 
Perianth glabrous-, the tube about 2 lines long, slightly dilated below the middle, revolute under 
the limb. 
Torus slightly oblique. 
Gland semiannular. 
Ovary stipitate ; style not long, with a very oblique almost lateral stigmatic disk. 
Fruit about 1 inch long, ^ to inch broad, often somewhat verrucose, with a short conical beak, 
the valves without any or with scarcely prominent dorsal protuberances at the end. 
Seed-wing usually more or less decurrent along the upper margin only of the nucleus. (B.F1. 
v, 515.) 
Botanical Name. Hakea, already explained (see Part XLVI, p. 106) ; 
leucoptera, from two Greek words, leucos white, pteron a wing (white winged). The 
explanation is afforded by the words in the original description " seminibus albo- 
cinereis " (seeds ashy white). 
Vernacular Names. Needle Bush and Pin Bush, because of their terete 
pointed leaves ; Needle Wood for the same reason. It is also called " Water- tree," 
because the roots are used to give a limited water-supply to the aborigines in dry 
regions. 
Aboriginal Names. It would appear to have several aboriginal names, 
e.g., " Booldoobah," Ivanhoe, via Hay, N.S.W. (K. H. Bennett) ; " Uri," Gunbar, 
Darling River, N.S.W. (Robert E. Horton) ; " Kuluva," Mount Lyndhurst, S.A., 
practically a type locality (Max Koch) ; " Kuloa," at Cooper's Creek, near Lake 
Eyre, S.A. (A. W. Howitt). 
