Notes. 
136 
killed at its base by heat so that the water supply is cut off from the fruits, or even if 
the water supply is strongly diminished by partial interruption of the wood-cylinder, 
or by drought. Repeated attempts to germinate twenty-year-old and ten-year-old 
seeds failed, but it seems always to be a difficult matter to obtain satisfactory 
germination with the seeds of this plant. 
The popular superstition is that the seeds will only germinate after subjection to 
intense heat, as after a bush fire. The origin of this idea probably lies in the fact 
that the fruits are retained undehisced for a long time, so long as they are supplied 
with sap, but that on dead or cut branches dehiscence soon follows as the result of 
the cessation of the supply of water. Scrub fires very commonly kill the basal ends 
of stems or branches, and leave the upper portions more or less uninjured, so that 
Fig. 1. Clusters of fruits on stems of Callisiemon rigida. (ci) Cut and dried four-year-old stem, 
the fruits all dehisced. (6) Cluster twenty months old, freshly cut and fruits all undehisced, (c) 
Cluster nine months old, fruits half-grown and not yet in contact. 
the still living fruits would then dehisce and shed their abundant seeds to germinate 
on the temporarily cleared ground beneath. 
Dehisced fruits on living branches dry up, and fall gradually from the clusters, 
leaving these broken and irregular. Even when all have fallen, the cluster is still 
represented by pits on the bark which persist for some years, 
