Description
Banksia aemula is generally a gnarled shrub or small tree to 8 m (25 ft), although usually smaller. The trunk has thick orange-brown wrinkled and warty bark, and the new growth is hairy but becomes smooth as it ages. New shoot growth is in spring and summer. The shiny green leaves are obovate to oblong in shape and measure 3–22 cm (1.4–9 in) in length, and 1–2 cm (0.4–0.8 in) in width. The leaf ends are truncate and the margins flat and serrated. Flowering is in autumn, from March to June; the green-yellow flower spikes, known as inflorescences, are terminal, found on the ends of branches and emerging from the foliage. Measuring 4 to 20 cm (1.6–8 in) in height and 8 to 9 cm (2.8–3.2 in) in width, they are various shades of pale and greenish yellow. Anywhere from 800 to 1700 individual small flowers arise from a central woody spike (or rachis). Initially tipped with white conical pollen presenters, the flowers open sequentially from the bottom to the top of the inflorescence over one to two weeks, in a process known as anthesis. Each flower produces nectar for around seven days after opening. The flower spikes turn grey as they age and up to 25 finely furred grey follicles appear, which can be very large, measuring 3–4.5 cm (1.2–2.6 in) long, 2–3.5 cm (0.8–1.4 in) high, and 2–3.5 cm (0.8–1.4 in) wide. They split open either after bushfire or spontaneously, and release oval seeds 4–4.7 cm (1.6–1.9 in) in length, composed of a wedge-shaped body 1–1.5 cm (0.4–0.6 in) long and 1.1–1.6 cm (0.4–0.6 in) wide, and curved wing 2–3.2 cm (0.8–1.3 in) wide. Banksia aemula resprouts from its woody lignotuber after fire.
Banksia aemula closely resembles Banksia serrata, but the latter can be distinguished by a greyer, not orange-brown, trunk, and adult leaves wider than 2 cm (0.8 in) in diameter. Inflorescences of serrata are generally a duller grey-yellow in colour, and have longer (2–3 mm), more fusiform (spindle-shaped) or cylindrical pollen presenters tipping unopened flowers. Finally, the follicles are smaller.
Read more about this topic: Banksia Aemula
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)