Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/200

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Shrubs or small trees, glabrous or silky-pubescent. Leaves small, alternate, entire. Flowers solitary or 2–3 together, axillary or at the ends of the branchlets, often polygamous. Calyx-tube campanulate or turbinate, adnate to the ovary below; lobes 5. Petals 5, spreading. Stamens numerous, free, in a single series; anthers versatile. Ovary inferior or half-superior, enclosed in the calyx-tube, 5- or more-celled, rarely 3–4-celled; style filiform; stigma capitate or peltate. Capsule woody or coriaceous, exceeding the calyx-tube or altogether included in it, opening loculicidally at the top. Seeds numerous in each cell, but most of them sterile, pendulous, linear or angular.

1. L. scoparium, ''Forst. Char. Gen.'' 72, t. 36.—A shrub or small tree, extremely variable in size, usually 6–18 ft. high, but sometimes dwarfed to a foot or two, occasionally reaching 20–25 ft. with a trunk 12–18 in. diam.; branches fastigiate or spreading; branchlets and young leaves silky. Leaves $1⁄5$–$1⁄6$ in. long, variable in shape, linear or linear-lanceolate to broadly ovate, sessile, rigid, concave, acute and pungent-pointed, veinless, dotted, erect or spreading, rarely recurved. Flowers sessile, solitary, axillary or terminating the branchlets, ¼–½ in. diam. Calyx-tube broadly turbinate; lobes orbicular, deciduous. Petals orbicular, slightly clawed. Capsule woody, persistent, half sunk in the calyx-tube, which forms a rim round it, the free portion 5-valved.—''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 337; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 553; Raoul, Choix, 49; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 69; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 69; Kirk, Forest Fl. t. 117; Students' Fl.'' 157.

Var. linifolium, ''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 69.—Leaves narrow linear-lanceolate.

Var. myrtifolium, ''Hook. f. l.c.''—Leaves ovate, spreading or recurved.

Var. parvum, Kirk, Students' Fl. 158.—1–3 ft. high. Leaves $1⁄2$ in. long, ovate, spreading. Flowers smaller, $1⁄8$–$1⁄8$ in.

Var. prostratum, ''Hook. f. l.c.''—Small, often prostrate, branches ascending at the tips. Leaves ovate or almost orbicular, recurved. A mountain form.

Abundant throughout, ascending to 3500ft. Manuka; Tea-tree. October–April. Also plentiful in Australia and Tasmania.