The flowers are stellate, cymose, on stems rising from the heart of the leafy rosettes.
Certain American forms, however, which are preserved as stellate groups, have been interpreted as complex umbrella-shaped colonial stocks, individuals of a still higher order (synrhabdosomes), composed of a number of biserial polyparies (each having a sicula at its outer extremity) attached by their nemacauli to a common centre of origin, which is provided with two disks, a swimming bladder and a ring of capsules.
It is true that some specialized forms, such as the Brisingidae among starfish, A strophiura and Ophioteresis among ophiurans, contravene the usual diagnoses; but this neither obscures their systematic position, nor does it alter the fact that since early Palaeozoic times these two great groups of stellate echinoderms have evolved along separate lines.
Petaline hairs, though sparse and scattered, present occasionally the same arrangement as those which occur on the leaves; thus, in Bombaceae they are stellate.
The patient is placed in the sitting position to facilitate the spread of anesthesia inferiorly to the stellate ganglion.