Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/101

Pittosporum.] long, elliptical or elliptical-oblong, acute or subacute, slightly coriaceous, narrowed into slender petioles ½–1 in. long; margins often undulate. Flowers polygamous or diœcious, small, yellowish, in terminal branched many-flowered compound umbels or corymbs; peduncles and pedicels slender, spreading, silky-pubescent. Sepals ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, glabrous. Petals linear-oblong, spreading and recurved, more than twice as long as the sepals. Capsules numerous, small, ¼ in. long, ovoid, acute, glabrous, 2-3-valved.—''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. ; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 21; Kirk, Forest Fl. t. 49; Students Fl.'' 52. P. elegans, Raoul, Choix de Plantes, 25. ''P. microcarpum, Putterlich, Syn. Pittosp.'' 15.

 

Herbs, very rarely woody at the base; branches usually swollen at the nodes. Leaves opposite, quite entire or minutely serrulate, often united at the base; stipules scarious or wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite. Sepals 4–5, free or cohering into a tubular calyx, imbricate. Petals 4–5 or occasionally absent, hypogynous or rarely perigynous, entire or lobed. Stamens 8–10, rarely fewer, inserted with the petals. Ovary free, 1-celled or imperfectly 3–5-celled at the base; styles 2–5, free or more or less connate into a single style; ovules 2 to many, attached to a free central or basal placenta. Fruit usually capsular, splitting into as many or twice as many valves as styles, very rarely indehiscent. Seeds few or many; albumen farinaceous, usually more or less surrounded by the narrow curved embryo.

