Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/444

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Shrubs or small trees, sometimes low and creeping. Leaves usually alternate, sometimes opposite or whorled, rigid, simple, entire or serrate; stipules wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite. Calyx inferior, 4–5-toothed or -cleft. Corolla gamopetalous, hypogynous, regular, often campanulate or urceolate, 4–5-toothed or -lobed (in some exotic genera divided into 4–5 free petals). Stamens usually double the number of the corolla-lobes, rarely the same number, hypogynous or sometimes adnate to the base of the corolla; filaments free; anthers 2-celled, opening by terminal pores or slits, often furnished with appendages. Ovary superior, 4–5-celled; style simple, terminal; stigma capitate, entire or shortly lobed; ovules usually many, attached to tlae inner angle of the cell or pendulous from the top of the angle. Fruit a capsule or berry, sometimes enclosed in the enlarged and succulent calyx (Gaultheria). Seeds usually numerous, small; albumen fleshy; embryo straight, axile.

Erect or procumbent shrubs, often hispid or strigose. Leaves persistent, alternate, usually serrate or serrulate, coriaceous. Flowers small, racemose or axillary and solitary. Calyx 5-lobed or -partite, in fruit usually enlarged and more or less succulent and coloured. Corolla urceolate or campanuiate, o-lobed; lobes imbricate, spreading or recurved. Stamens 10, included within the corolla-tube; filaments more or less dilated; anthers 2-celled. each cell opening by a terminal or oblique pore and tipped with 2 erect awns. Ovary 5-celled, with several ovules in each cell; style cylindric; stigma simple. Capsule 5-celled, loculicidally 5-valved, included in the usually enlarged and succulent calyx. Seeds numerous, minute, subglobose or obtusely angled.

A genus of nearly 100 species, mainly American, stretching from Oregon to Cape Horn, a few found in Australia and New Zealand, some in India and the Malay Archipelago, and one in Japan. In the New Zealand species the calyx is sometimes enlarged and succulent and sometimes dry and unaltered when the