Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/247

Crantzia.]

A small creeping herb. Leaves linear, terete or compressed, undivided, transversely septate. Umbels simple, with minute involucral bracts. Flowers minute. Calyx-teeth small. Petals concave, acute, imbricate in the bud. Fruit ovoid-globose, slightly flattened laterally. Carpels nearly terete, with 5 ribs separated by furrows, the lateral ribs forming a thick and corky mass near the commissure. Vittae 1 under each furrow and 2 at the commissure.

1. C. lineata, ''Nutt. Gen. N. Amer. Pl.'' i. 177.—Perfectly glabrous. Rhizome slender, creeping and rooting at the nodes, 2–6 in. long or more. Leaves usually tufted at the nodes, variable in size, ½–4 in. long, narrow-linear, fistulose, terete or sub-compressed, obtuse at the tip, transversely septate internally. Peduncles axillary, shorter than the leaves, filiform, bearing a single 2–8-flowered umbel. Flowers white. Fruit $1⁄12$ in. long.—''Hook. f. Fl. Antarct.'' ii. 287, t. 100; Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 87; ''Handb. N.Z. Fl. 89; Benth. Fl. Austral,'' iii. 374; Kirk, Students' Fl. 199.

Erect and rigid usually spinescent glabrous perennials, often of large size. Leaves thick and coriaceous, pinnate or 2–3-pinnate, the rhachis transversely jointed at the insertion of the leaflets, leaf-segments usually ending in stout rigid spines. Umbels compound, in the axils of spinescent floral leaves or bracts, usually forming a more or less dense paniculate or spicate inflorescence; male umbels much more lax than the females. Flowers unisexual, usually diœcious. Calyx-teeth small or obsolete. Petals incurved, rarely with an inflexed tip. Stylopodia depressed in the male flowers, erect and conical in the female. Fruit oblong or linear-oblong; carpels with narrowly winged ridges, usually one 5-winged and the other 4- winged, or both 5-winged or 4- winged, or not rarely one carpel is 3- winged and the other 4- winged. Vittæ 1–3 under each furrow and 2–5 on the commissural face.