Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/307

Asperula.] 

1. A. perpusilla, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 114.—A small slender decumbent perennial. Stems weak, filiform, branched, 1–3 in. high, glabrous. Leaves in whorls of 4, $1⁄15$–$1⁄10$ in. long, lanceolate, acuminate, awned, straight or curved, margins usually ciliate. Flowers minute, white, axillary or terminal, solitary, often unisexual; males usually pedicelled; females sessile. Calyx-tube glabrous. Corolla $1⁄12$ in. diam., campanulate, 4- or rarely 5-partite, tube very short. Styles united below, their tips free, divergent. Fruit of 2 globose minutely granulate cocci.—''Handb. N.Z. Fl. 121; Kirk, Students' Fl.'' 248. A. aristifera, ''Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst.'' xxi. (1889) 88.





Herbs, shrubs, or small trees. Leaves alternate, rarely opposite or whorled; stipules wanting. Inflorescence composed of one or many flower-heads (capitula), each consisting of numerous minute flowers (florets) sessile and densely packed on the enlarged tip of the flower-stalk (receptacle), surrounded by an involucre of whorled bracts and resembling a single flower. Heads either solitary and terminal (rarely axillary) or arranged in corymbose cymes or panicles, sometimes contracted into clusters or even compound heads. Involucre of few or many bracts (scales of the involucre) arranged m one or several rows. Receptacle either naked (no bracteoles mixed with the florets) or with bracteoles in the shape of chaffy scales or bristles (paleæ) placed at the outside of most or all of the florets, sometimes with the surface pitted or honeycombed. Florets many or few (very rarely 1), either all of one kind as regards sex, when the heads are said to be homogamous, or of more than one kind, when they are called heterogamous. The homogamous heads either have all their florets tubular and hermaphrodite (discoid) or all ligulate and hermaphrodite (liguliflorous). The heterogamous heads frequently have the central florets tubular and hermaphrodite or male, and the outer ones ligulate and female or neuter. The heads are then said to be radiate. The tubular florets in the centre are called florets of the disc, or simply disc-florets; the ligulate ones florets of the ray, or ray-florets. Heterogamous