Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/144

104 

Trees or shrubs, often exuding a resinous and usually acrid juice. Leaves alternate, simple or compound, exstipulate. Flowers regular, small, hermaphrodite, unisexual or polygamous. Calyx 3–5-partite, imbricate. Petals 3–7, rarely wanting, free, perigynous, imbricate. Disc usually annular or cup-shaped, entire or lobed. Stamens as many or twice as many as the petals, inserted under or upon the disc; filaments usually free; anthers 2-celled. Ovary superior, usually 1-celled, sometimes 2–5-celled, very rarely of 2–5 free carpels; styles 1–3; ovules solitary in the cells, either pendulous from the top or wall or from a basal funicle. Fruit superior or very rarely half-inferior, usually a 1–5-celled 1–5-seeded drupe. Seed exalbuminous; embryo straight or curved, cotyledons usually fleshy, radicle short.

A tree, everywhere perfectly glabrous. Leaves large, alternate simple and entire. Flowers small, greenish, in terminal branched panicles. Calyx 5-lobed; lobes rounded, imbricate. Petals 5 rounded, erose, imbricate. Disc fleshy, 5-lobed. Stamens 5, inserted on the disc, alternating with as many petaloid staminodia. Ovary sessile, ovoid, 1-celled, narrowed into an erect style; stigma capitate; ovule solitary, pendulous from near the top of the cell. Drupe large, obovoid, obtuse, fleshy; endocarp forming a coriaceous and fibrous network round the seed. Seed pendulous; testa membranous, adhering to the cavity of the cell; embryo thick; cotyledons plano-convex; radicle minute, superior.

1. C. laevigata, ''Forst. Char. Gen.'' 31, t. 16.—A handsome leafy tree 30–40 ft. high, with a trunk 1–2 ft diam. or more. Leaves 3–8 in. long, elliptic-oblong or oblong-obovate, subacute, narrowed into a short stout petiole, thick and coriaceous, dark-green and glossy; margins slightly recurved. Panicles 4–8 in. long, broad, rigid, erect, much branched. Flowers small, $1⁄6$ in. diam., on short stout pedicels. Petals concave, barely exceeding the calyx-lobes. Filaments stout, subulate. Ovary small, glabrous. Drupe 1–1½ in. long, orange.—''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 365; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 638; Raoul, Choix, 50; Bot. Mag.'' t. 4379;