Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/211

Epilobium.] ascending; placentas axile. Fruit various, generally a 2–4-celled capsule with loculicidal or septicidal dehiscence, sometimes a berry, rarely nut-like. Seeds usually small, sometimes provided with a tuft of hairs; albumen none, or a thin layer only.

Herbs; stems erect or decumbent or creeping, sometimes hard and almost woody at the base. Leaves alternate or opposite, entire or toothed. Flowers rose-coloured or purple or white, solitary in the upper axils or forming a terminal raceme or spike. Calyx-tube scarcely produced beyond the ovary, linear, 4-angled or nearly terete; limb 4-partite, deciduous. Petals 4, obovate or obcordate, spreading or erect. Stamens 8, the 4 alternate ones shorter. Ovary inferior, 4-celled; style filiform; stigma clavate or with 4 spreading or erect lobes; ovules numerous, 2-seriate, ascending. Capsule elongate, 4-angled, 4-celled and 4-valved, the valves separating and curving back from a central seed-bearing axis. Seeds numerous, broadest above, the summit furnished with a tuft of long hairs.