The outside of the capitulum bears five strengthening calcareous plates corresponding with the plates that protect an acorn barnacle.
The capitulum is protected by eight large, sheathing scales and a ring of about twenty tiny scales surround the joint of capitulum and peduncle.
For assisted pollination, male inflorescences were collected and pollen was applied to the stigmas of female flowers by rubbing the male capitula directly against the female flowers.
The capitula open acropetally along each inflorescence axis so that usually there is no more than a single capitulum at anthesis per inflorescence at any time.
They hovered briefly about 2 cm from a capitulum, then landed and immediately started moving quickly through the projecting anthers using their fore and mid legs.
Musaeus' responsoria may have been refrains designed to answer the verses chosen as 'psalmorum capitula'.
The tree had up to about 50 capitula at anthesis on the nights when observations were made and it was reaching the end of its flowering period.
In the chiropterophilous species the capitula are much larger and typically borne on long, pendent peduncles arranged in little-branched inflorescences.
