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The smaller bracts or bracteoles, which occur among the subdivisions of a branching inflorescence, often produce no flower-buds, and thus anomalies occur in the floral arrangements.

In the female the bracts fall early, but their place is taken by three-lobed bracteoles, which enlarge after flowering, and become an inch or an inch and a half long.

In the fruit the bracteoles form two woody valves between which is a nut; the aggregate of fruits resemble small cones.

They have very short pedicels, and the whorl is supported by a bract of stem-clasping leaves, cupped, and variously shaped, as ovate and beaked; there are also supplementary bracteoles.

She carries a faded cut-flower, got at considerable cost from a botanical garden, and as she goes she counts its petals, its stamens, its bracteoles.