Hakea Schrader (1797), in the family Proteaceae, contains around 150 species in Australia.

Description Trees to 10m, or shrubs. The leaves are alternate, evergreen, often stiff and pointed, or leathery, flat, or holly-like, sometimes divided. The flowers are usually whitish, sometimes pink or red, in clusters or in dense, elongated spikes, along the shoots in the leaf axils. Sepals 4, joined at the base to form a tubular flower, curving as the flower opens; petals absent. Stamens 4, without stalks, attached to the tips of the sepals. Ovary superior, with 1 carpel containing several ovules; style 1, curved, with a conical pollen-presenter, which picks up the pollen from the stamens as it unbends. Pollination is by birds in the red-flowered species, mainly by butterflies in the white-flowered species. The fruits are large, thick-walled, woody capsules, often beaked or horned, with 1 or 2 winged seeds.

Key Recognition Features The clusters of flowers in the leaf axils and the large, woody, 1- or 2-seeded fruits.

Evolution and Relationships Related to Grevillea, but distinctive in its woody fruits and its stiff leaves, which are never silvery beneath.

Ecology and Geography Throughout Australia, but with most species in southwestern Western Australia. The hardiest species, including H. sericea Schrader, are from Tasmania and the mountains of southeastern Australia.

Comment A few Hakea species are sometimes cultivated in northern Europe as a curiosity. The more spectacular species with red flowers can be grown outside in the Mediterranean and California. Hakea victoria Drumm., the royal hakea, from Western Australia, has prickly, white-and-red variegated leaves on the flowering shoots.