No. 159. 
Telopea oreades, F.v.M. 
Gippsland Waratah. 
(Family PROTEACE^.) 
Botanical description.— Genus, Telopea, B.Br. 
Flowers hermaphrodite. 
Perianth irregular, the tube open early on the under-side, tapering and recurved under the limb, 
the laminae oblique, broad. 
Anthers broad, sessile at the base of the laminae, the connective not produced beyond the cells. 
Hypogynous glands united in a short very oblique nearly complete ring. 
Ovary contracted into a long stipes and tapering into a long style, clavate at the end, with a 
lateral stigma; ovules several, imbricate upwards in two rows, laterally attached near 
the base. 
Fruit a recurved coriaceous follicle. 
Seeds flat, terminating in a nearly straight or oblique membranous wing. Tall shrubs. 
Leaves alternate, entire or toothed. 
Flowers pedicellate in pairs, in very dense globular or ovoid terminal racemes, surrounded by an 
involucre of imbricate coloured bracts, the bracts within the raceme small. 
Perianths as well as the whole inflorescence red. 
The genus is endemic in Australia. It is allied in many respects to Hakea, differing chiefly in 
the number of ovules and seeds, and in habit. ( B.pi. v, 533.) 
Botanical description. —Species, T. oreades, F.v.M., in Fragm., ii, 170 (1860). 
A shrub with the habit of T. speciosissima, the branches slightly ferruginous-pubescent, the 
foliage glabrous. 
Leaves obovate-oblong or almost lanceolate, acute or obtuse, 4 to 8 inches long, tapering into a 
long petiole, entire or rarely with a few teeth at the end, usually glaucous underneath, the 
veins scarcely conspicuous except the midrib. 
Racemes short, broad, and dense, as in T. speciosissima, but the glabrous involucre in one 
specimen coloured and obtuse with the inner bracts, 1 inch long, in the other specimens all 
herbaceous rigid mucronate, and the inner ones scarcely | inch long. 
Flowers of T. speciosissima. 
Fruit 3 inches long, besides the stipes and persistent style. ( B.Fl. v, 534.) 
Mueller’s brief description of it in Key to the System of Victorian Plants , 
i, 277 (1888), is— 
Finally quite arborescent; branchlets also glabi - ous ; leaves large, firm, mostly olxovate-lanceolar 
entire, their ultimate venules subtle; corolla crimson, slit unilaterally; glandule at the 
upper end of the stalklets rather conspicuous. 
