Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/127

Linum.] stems few or many, simple or branched, erect or spreading, 6–24 in. high. Leaves numerous, scattered, ascending, ¼–1 in. long, linear-oblong to linear-lanceolate or linear-subulate, 1–3-nerved. Flowers in terminal corymbs, white, often large and handsome, sometimes 1 in. diam. Sepals ovate or ovate-lanceolate, acute. Styles united at the base, their tips free, recurved. Capsule large, broadly ovoid, splitting into 10 1-seeded cocci.—''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 317; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 608; Hook. Bot. Mag. t. 3574; Raoul, Choix de Plantes, 47; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 28; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 35; Kirk, Students' Fl.'' 77.

 

Herbs or shrubs, very rarely trees. Leaves opposite or alternate, usually stipulate. Flowers regular or irregular, generally hermaphrodite. Sepals 5, seldom fewer, free or united to the middle, imbricate or rarely valvate, posterior one sometimes spurred. Petals as many as the sepals, rarely fewer or wanting, hypogynous or slightly perigynous, usually imbricate. Torus barely expanded into a disc, with or without 5 glands alternating with the petals, usually raised in the centre into a beak. Stamens generally twice the number of the petals or fewer by suppression; filaments free or connate at the base; anthers 2-celled. Ovary 3–5-lobed, cells the same number; carpels 3–5, adnate to the axis as far as the insertion of the ovules, and often prolonged into a beak-like style or styles; ovules 1–2 to each carpel, rarely more. Fruit a 3–5-lobed capsule, often splitting from below upwards into as many 1-seeded carpels with long styles, which coil up elastically; or the capsule may be loculicidally 3–5-celled, with 2-several seeds in each cell; or more rarely the mature fruit is composed of 3–5 indehiscent 1-seeded cocci. Seeds with scanty or no albumen; embryo straight or curved.