Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/149

Carmichælia.]

Erect or depressed shrubs, some species attaining a height of 6–10 ft., others reduced to broad matted patches hardly rising more than an inch or two above the ground. Branchlets flattened or terete, grooved or striate, green. Leaves often absent, except in seedlings; when present deciduous after the flowers have fallen, 1-foliolate or pinnately 3–5-foliolate. Flowers small, in lateral racemes springing from notches on the edges of the branchlets, rarely solitary. Calyx campanulate or cup-shaped, 5-toothed. Standard orbicular, usually reflexed, contracted into a short claw. Wings more or less falcate, oblong, obtuse, auricled towards the base. Keel oblong, incurved, obtuse, shorter or longer than the standard. Upper stamen free, the others connate into a sheath. Ovary narrowed into a slender beardless style; stigma minute, terminal; ovules numerous. Pod small, coriaceous, narrow-oblong to almost orbicular, straight or oblique, compressed or turgid, narrowed into a short or long subulate beak; valves with the edges thickened and consolidated, forming a kind of framework called the replum, from which the faces of the valves come away; or in a few species the valves remain attached to the replum and the pod is indehiscent. Seeds 1–12, reniform or oblong; radicle usually with a double fold.