Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/429

Sonchus.] blunt points, the outer with a row of short spines down the median line. Florets numerous, purplish. Achenes large, broad, spongy, with 3–6 longitudinal ribs; margins broad.—Students Fl. 362.



 Herbs, rarely undershrubs. Leaves alternate, scattered or densely imbricate, entire; stipules wanting. Flowers hermaphrodite or unisexual, irregular or almost regular. Calyx adnate to the ovary; lobes usually 5, free or connate into two lips. Corolla gamopetalous, 5-lobed; the lobes subregular and equal in the New Zealand genera, but in the bulk of the order the lowest lobe is smaller and narrower and recurved, and is known as the labellum. Stamens 2; filaments united with the style into a column; anthers sessile at the top of the column. Ovary inferior, more or less completely 2-celled, usually crowned with 1 or 2 fleshy glands. Stigma at the apex of the column, entire or 2-lobed, hidden between the anthers or protruding from between them. Ovules numerous in each cell, attached to the dissepiment or to a central axis, anatropous. Fruit a 1–2-celled capsule, dehiscent or indehiscent. Seeds numerous or few by abortion, minute; albumen fleshy; embryo very minute, next the hilum.

Densely tufted perfectly glabrous moss-like plants, forming hard and compact flat or convex masses in alpine localities. Leaves small, closely imbricating. Flowers sessile among the leaves at the tips of the branches, monœcious or polygamo-diœcious. Calyx-tube obconic; lobes 5–9, equal or slightly unequal. Corolla almost regular; tube short; limb spreading, with 4–9 subequal 