Material and Methods

The following material was collected:

N. menziesii. Flowering season of 1947–48; pistillate flowers from three localities were collected at infrequent intervals from anthesis in October, 1947, until January, 1948 Flowering season of 1948–49; pistillate flowers were collected every few days from August to December, 1949 (anthesis about the middle of October), from an isolated tree in the Wellington Botanical Gardens.

N. fusca. Flowering season of 1947–48; pistillate flowers were collected at infrequent intervals from anthesis in October, 1947, until January, 1948. Flowering season of 1948–49; pistillate flowers were collected every few days from August to December, 1949 (anthesis about the middle of October), from an isolated tree in the Wellington Botanical Gardens.

N. truncata, N. solandri, and N. cliffortioides. Flowering season of 1947–48; pistillate flowers were collected at infrequent intervals from anthesis until January, 1948.

N. obliqua and N. procera. Flowering season of 1948–49; pistillate flowers were collected about the time of anthesis (middle of October) from trees growing in the garden of B. C. Aston, Wellington, and the grounds of the Plant Diseases Division, D.S.I.R., Auckland. In December, ovules were obtained from developing nuts collected by G. H. Hocking from Kiwitea, Feilding.

Fagus sylvatica. Flowering season of 1948–49; pistillate flowers were collected at irregular intervals from the time of anthesis at the beginning of October until late December from a tree growing in Wellington.

Material was fixed in formalin acetic alcohol. Preservation of complete flowers was made until two or three weeks after anthesis. By this time lignified tissue had begun to form in the developing nut so that it was necessary to take out the developing ovules and to preserve them separately. Embedding was done by the tertiary butyl alcohol method described by Johansen (1940). Sections were cut with a Cambridge rocker microtome usually to thicknesses of 12–16μ. Stains used were safranin and fast green, Delafield's haematoxylin (both Johansen, loc. cit.) and safranin and analine blue. Haematoxylin proved to be a most suitable stain generally and was the one finally used for staining most of the sections.