Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/434

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Herbs or shrubs. Leaves alternate or radical, rarely opposite; stipules wanting. Flowers hermaphrodite, irregular or rarely regular, axillary or terminal, solitary or in spikes or racemes or panicles. Calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, limb of 5 persistent lobes or obsolete. Corolla gamopetalous, usually irregular, 5-lobed, often split to the base at the back. Stamens 5, alternate with the lobes of the corolla and inserted at its base; anthers free or rarely connate into a ring surrounding the style. Ovary inferior or nearly so, 1–2-celled; style simple, with a cup-shaped or 2-lipped expansion which encloses the stigma, and is called the indusium; ovules 1 or 2 or more in each cell, erect or ascending. Fruit an indehisfent drupe or nut or a 2–4-valved capsule. Seeds albuminous; embryo axile, radicle next the hilum.

Small glabrous creeping and rooting perennial herbs. Leaves alternate or fascicled at the nodes, entire. Flowers axillary, sessile or pedunculate. Calyx-tube adnate to the ovary; limb 5-lobed or -partite. Corolla oblique, split to the base at the back; limb of 5 nearly equal lobes, at length digitately spreading; the margins inflexed or winged. Stamens 5, epigynous; anthers free. Ovary inferior, more or less completely 2-celled; ovules numerous in each cell. Style undivided; stigma short, truncate, enclosed within the cup -shaped indusium. Fruit fleshy, indehiscent. Seeds usually numerous, compressed or irregularly shaped.

1. S. radicans, Cav. Ic. v. 49, t. 474.—A glabrous creeping and rooting perennial; stems 1–10 in. long, usually matted and interlaced, forrning broad fiat patches. Leaves variable in size, ½–4 in. long, linear-spathulate to oblong-spathulate or obovate-spathulate, obtuse, narrowed into a long petiole, quite entire, nerveless, very thick and fleshy. Peduncles axillary, 1- or rarely 2-flowered, shorter than the leaves, with 2 subulate bracts above the middle. Flowers white, ⅓ in. long. Calyx-lobes lanceolate or linear. Corolla-lobes ovate, acute, not winged. Fruit fleshy, ovoid or obovoid, about ¼ in. long. Seeds compressed, orbicular, narrowly