Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/458

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Erect or prostrate shrubs, or more rarely small trees; branches ringed with the scars of the fallen leaves. Leaves crowded at the ends of the branches or imbricate along them, broad and sheathing at the base, above that suddenly contracted into a very narrow linear rigid or grassy usually concave blade. Flowers small, white or red, in terminal or lateral panicles or racemes or spikes, rarely solitary. Sepals 5, ovate or lanceolate, persistent. Corolla cylindric or campanulate; lobes 5, spreading, imbricate, often incurved at the tips. Stamens hypogynous, or the filaments adnate to the corolla-tube; anthers usually included in the tube, attached at or near the middle. Hypogynous scales 5, free. Ovary 5-ceIled; style inserted in a depression at the top of the ovary; stigma small, or larger and 5-lobed; ovules numerous, attached to a decurved placenta in the inner angle of the cell. Capsule 5-celled, loculicidally 5-valved. Seeds numerous.