Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/208

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Shrubs or rarely trees, glabrous or pubescent or tomentose. Leaves opposite, often coriaceous, pellucid-dotted. Flowers axillary, solitary or in few-flowered cymes. Calyx-tube subglobose or turbinate; lobes 4–5, usually persistent. Petals 4–5, spreading. Stamens very numerous, in many series, free, longer than the petals. Ovary inferior, completely or imperfectly 2–3-celled; ovules numerous in each cell. Fruit a globose or ovoid berry, crowned with the persistent calyx-limb. Seeds few or many, reniform or almost globose; testa crustaceous or bony. Embryo terete, curved or annular; cotyledons small; radicle long.

1. M. bullata, Sol. ex A. Cunn. Precur. n. 565.—An erect shrub, usually from 10 to 15 ft., but sometimes taller and becoming a small tree 20–25 ft. high; branchlets and young leaves tomentose. Leaves 1–2 in. long, reddish-brown, shortly petioled, broadly ovate or orbicular-ovate, obtuse or acute or apiculate, coriaceous, the surface tumid or blistered between the veins. Flowers axillary, solitary, ½ in. diam., white. Peduncles longer or shorter than the leaves, tomentose. Calyx 2-bracteolate at the base; lobes 4, obtuse or subacute. Petals orbicular, white. Berry ⅓ in. long, broadly ovoid, dark-red, becoming almost black when fully ripe, 2-celled. Seeds numerous, in 2 series in each cell, reniform; testa bony.—''Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 557; Bot. Mag. t. 4809; Raoul, Choix, 49; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 70; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 74; Kirk, Forest Fl. t. 131; Students' Fl.'' 164.