Ternifolia Group of Macadamia — Storey 
509 
branchlets. The racemes rarely exceed 5 inches 
in length, with an upper limit of about 100 
flowers (Fig. 1). The follicular fruits mature 
and drop in April in Australia, in November 
in California. The species is not ordinarily cul- 
tivated because the nuts are so bitter that they 
are unpalatable. They are small in comparison 
with those of the other species (Fig. 2). The 
leaves are small, rarely exceeding 6 inches in 
length and 1 inch in width. The transition 
which occurs in leaf form from seedlings of 
newly initiated branch shoots to the adult, 
fruiting branch is shown in Figure 3 A. The 
leaves occur in nodal whorls of three to five, 
but young seedlings may have them initially 
only in opposite pairs. 
Much of the misidentification and confusion 
among the species resulted from the mixing of 
transitional forms in the herbarium. A more 
detailed discussion of leaf forms and variations 
in nodal numbers has been published elsewhere 
( Storey, 1963). 
