22 ON THE PROTEACE.E OE JUSSIEU.
advantage referred to that which he has termed Akenium ; but as I am unwilling in the present paper to adopt any term not more generally sanctioned and understood than this, I shall content myself with calling those nuces, which are either not at all or but slightly compressed and not bor- dered ; and apply the term samara to such as are either very much compressed, or with a less remarkable com- pression are surrounded or terminated by a membranaceous border: that I regard these distinctions however as in some cases of very little importance, may be inferred from this, that my genus Leucadendron includes both these kinds of fruit.
The first observation I have to offer on the fruits of Proteaceae is, that there is no really bivalvular capsule in the order ; a truth which was not perceived by Gsertner in 35] describing his Banksia dactijhides (the Concilium dac- tyloides of Dr. Smith), and which has equally escaped Cavanilles and Labillardiere in their characters of Hakea, Dr. Smith has more cautiously omitted this consideration in his character of that genus, and Professor Schrader has accurately described the suture as only existing on one side : such fruits then are as trulv folliculi as those of Grevil/ea, B/wjiala, or Embothrium ; and that the existence of a distinct placenta is by no means necessary to con- stitute this kind of fruit, is proved even by some genera of Apocineae, to wdiich family this term was first applied.
A circumstance occurs in some species of Persoonia to which I have met with nothing similar in any other plant : the ovarium in this genus, whether it contain one or two ovula, has never more than one cell ; but in several of the two-seeded species a cellular substance is after fcecundation interposed between the ovula ; and this gradually indurat- ing acquires in the ripe fruit the same consistence as the putamen itself, from whose substance it cannot be distin- guished ; and thus a fruit originally of one cell becomes bilocular : the cells however are not parallel, as in all those cases where they exist in the unimpregnated ovarium, but diverge more or less upwards.
In all the seeds of this order there is a very manifest
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