Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/470

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Trees or shrubs, usually glabrous. Leaves alternate, undivided, generally provided with pellucid glandular dots; stipules wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite or polygamous. Calyx usually inferior, 4–6-lobed or -partite, segments often ciliate. Corolla gamopetalous (rarely polypetalous), segments (or petals) 4–6, contorted or imbricated. Stamens opposite to the corolla-lobes and equal to them in number, free or adnate to the tube. Anthers oblong, 2-celled, sometimes coherent. Ovary usually superior, 1-celled; style single, stigma generally capitate; ovules few or many, inserted on a free central placenta. Fruit a one- to several-seeded drupe or berry. Seeds roundish or angular; albumen copious, sometimes pitted or ruminate; embryo usually transverse.

Small trees or shrubs. Leaves coriaceous, entire or rarely toothed. Flowers small, polygamous or often aioecious, in sessile or stalked axillary fascicles or umbels or sometimes solitary; usually springing from the nodes on the old wood below the leaves. Calyx small, 4–5-fid, persistent. Corolla 4–5-partite or of 4–5 distinct petals; segments imbricate or rarely valvate, spreading or recurved. Stamens 4–5, inserted near the base of the corolla, filaments short. Ovary superior, 1-celled; style short or altogether absent; stigma capitate or lobed or fringed; ovules few, sunk in a fleshy placenta. Fruit small, globose, drupaceous, dry or fleshy. Seed solitary, usually surrounded by the remains of the placenta; albumen horny; embryo elongated, often curved.