Strangea Meisn.

Scientific Description

Common name. Strangeas. Family Proteaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Shrubs; evergreen. To 0.5–1.5 m high. Mesophytic, or xerophytic. Heterophyllous, or not heterophyllous. Leaves small to medium-sized; alternate (crowded or distant); usually spiral; leathery; petiolate to subsessile; non-sheathing; edgewise to the stem, or with ‘normal’ orientation; simple; epulvinate. Leaf blades entire, or dissected (rarely, 3-lobed); flat, or solid; terete; obovate, or linear; one-veined, or pinnately veined, or palmately veined. Leaves without stipules. Leaf blade margins entire, or dentate. Leaves without a persistent basal meristem. Leaf anatomy. Hairs absent. Stem anatomy. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers hermaphrodite. Unisexual flowers absent. Plants hermaphrodite. Entomophilous, or ornithophilous, or cheiropterophilous, or pollinated by unusual means.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers solitary, or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’. Inflorescence few-flowered, or many-flowered. Flowers in racemes, or in umbels, or in panicles. Inflorescences terminal (apparently), or axillary (to previous season's leaves); conflorescence 1-flowered or shortly umbel-, raceme- or panicle-like; with involucral bracts, or without involucral bracts. The fruiting inflorescence not conelike. Flowers pedicellate; small; very irregular; zygomorphic. The floral asymmetry involving the perianth. Flowers 4 merous; cyclic; tetracyclic. Floral receptacle developing a gynophore, or with neither androphore nor gynophore. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk absent. Nectariferous glands 1 (broad). Perianth of ‘tepals’; 4; 1 -whorled; joined (forming a tube that is bulbous at both ends, dividing into 4 free lobes); hairy (densely tomentose outside), or glabrous; yellow, or green to yellow, or blue to green, or red to purple. Androecial members definite in number. Androecium 4. Androecial members adnate; all equal; free of one another; 1 -whorled. Stamens 4; isomerous with the perianth; with sessile anthers. Anthers basifixed; non-versatile; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; introrse; four locular; tetrasporangiate. Gynoecium 1 carpelled. The pistil 1 celled. Gynoecium monomerous; of one carpel; superior. Carpel stylate; apically stigmatic. Style pollen presenter a large, circular, lateral disc with a central peak. Carpel 1–2 ovuled. Placentation marginal, or apical. Ovary stipitate. Ovules funicled; non-arillate; orthotropous, or anatropous, or amphitropous, or hemianatropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit persistent; non-fleshy (woody). The fruiting carpel dehiscent; a follicle. Follicles elongate; without septa. Fruit 1 celled; passively dehiscent (splitting open on one side to release seed). Dispersal unit the seed. Fruit 1 seeded. Seeds non-endospermic; 2- winged (the outer wing developed from the proximal part of the funicle and folded around the inner wing which is developed from the inner integument). Seed wings encircling body. Embryo well differentiated. Cotyledons 2. Embryo straight.

Special features. Stamens inserted within a concavity near the end of a perianth segment.

Geography, cytology, number of species. Native of Australia. Endemic to Australia. Australian states and territories: Western Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales. South-West Botanical Province. N=11.

Etymology. After Frederick Strange (d.1854), collector, especially of birds and shells, in South Australia, New South Wales and New Zealand, c.1836-.