Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/479

Parsonsia.]

Erect or climbing shrubs, rarely trees or herbs, juice often milky. Leaves opposite or whorled, very rarely alternate, simple and entire; stipules wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite, usually in axillary or terminal cymes. Calyx inferior, 4-lobed or -partite; lobes imbricate, often glandular at the base. Corolla gamopetalous, hypogynous, funnel- or salver-shaped; tube often hairy or scaly within; lobes 5, rarely 4, spreading, usually contorted in the bud. Stamens 5, rarely 4, inserted on the tube of the corolla; filaments short; anthers often sagittate, either free or connate and adhering to the stigma; pollen granular. Ovary superior, usually composed of 2 carpels connate only by their styles, but in one tribe the carpels are wholly combined into a 2-celled ovary with axile placentas or into a 1-celled ovary with 2 parietal placentas; ovules 2 or several or many; style single or separated at the base only, thickened above; stigma entire or 2-fid, often constricted in the middle. Fruit generally of 2 follicles opening along the inner pdge, sometimes a drupe or berry. Seeds various, often with a tuft of silky hairs; albumen generally present; embryo straight, radicle usually superior.

Twining shrubs, with long slender branched stems, often woody below. Leaves opposite. Flowers small, in terminal or axillary corymbose cymes. Calyx 5-partite, naked or glandular within or furnished with 5 scales. Corolla salver-shaped; tube short, cylindrical or nearly globular, throat naked; lobes 5, spreading, the edges overlapping to the right. Stamens inserted about the middle of the corolla-tube or below it; filaments often twisted; anthers included or exserted, cohering in a cone or ring round the stigma, cells produced into 2 rigid empty basal lobes. Hypogynous scales 5. Ovary 2-celled; style slender; ovules numerous in each cell. Fruit elongated, cylindric, of 2 coherent follicles which ultimately more or less separate from one another. Seeds linear or oblong, numerous, with a tuft of long silky hairs at the tip.