Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/459

Dracophyllum.]

1. D. latifolium, A. Cunn. Precur. n. 412.—A shrub or small tree 8–20 ft. high or more, with a trunk 4–12 in. diam.; young plants forming slender erect unbranched rods with a tuft of grassy leaves at the top; old ones much branched, the branches often whorled, curving outwards and then ascending, giving the tree a candelabrum-like appearance, closely ringed with the scars of the fallen leaves. Leaves crowded at the tips of the branches, squarrose, spreading and recurved, 10–24 in. long, 1–1½ in. broad at the dilated sheathing base, gradually tapering into very long slender points, quite glabrous, coriaceous, striate, concave or rarely nearly flat, margins very minutely serrulate. Panicle terminal, 6–18 in. long, much and closely branched, linear-oblong, erect in flower, inclined in fruit, rhachis and pedicels densely pubescent. Flowers crowded, very numerous, shortly pedicelled, ⅛ in. diam., reddish. Calyx very small, not ¼ the length of the corolla; sepals broadly ovate, acute or obtuse, striate. Corolla campanulate, lobes rather longer than the tube, oblong, obtuse, sharply recurved. Anthers large, oblong, exserted. Capsule small, $1⁄20$ diam., depresso-globose—Raoul, Choix, 44; ''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 167; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 181; Kirk, Forest Fl.'' t. 123. D. recurvatum, ''Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst.'' xxi. (1889) 92.