Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/111

Claytonia.], or opening by a transverse lid. Seeds 1 to many; embryo curved round a farinaceous albumen.

Annual or perennial low-growing glabrous and succulent herbs. Radical leaves petiolate, cauline opposite or alternate. Flowers solitary or in terminal or axillary racemes or cymes. Sepals 2, persistent. Petals 5, hypogynous. Stamens 5, adhering to the petals at the base. Ovary free; ovules few; style 3-cleft. Capsule globose or ovoid, membranous, 3-valved. Seeds reniform or orbicular, flattened.

1. C. australasica, ''Hook. f. in Hook. Ic. Plant.'' t. 293.—A perfectly glabrous tender and succulent usually matted plant, with slender creeping stems 1–6 in. long. Leaves very variable in size, ¼–1½ in. long, alternate or in distant pairs, narrow-linear or linear-spathulate, obtuse, dilated into broad membranous sheaths at the base. Flowers large, ¼–½ in. diam., white or rose, terminal or leaf-opposed, solitary or in few-flowered lax racemes; pedicels long, slender. Sepals small, broadly orbicular. Petals much longer, broad-obovate. Capsule globose, mucronate, usually slightly exceeding the sepals. Seeds generally 3, black, smooth and shining.—Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 73; ''Handb. N.Z. Fl. 26; Benth. Fl. Austral. i. 177; Kirk, Students' Fl.'' 65.