Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/512

472 style very shore, thick; stigma capitate. Fruit large, thick and spongy, pyramidal, 4-angled, composed of 4 coriaceous winged nutlets adhering to a central column.

1. M. nobile, ''Hook. Bot. Mag.'' t. 5137.—Perennial, stout, pilose; rootstock long, thick, cylindrical. Eadical leaves crowded, 6–12 in. long, broadly ovate-cordate or reniform, petioled, very thick and fleshy, bright-green and glabrous, strongly nerved; cauline few, broadly ovate or oblong, sessile. Cymes dense, subglobose, 3–6 in. diam., many-flowered. Flowers ½ in. diam., dark-blue in the centre, fading towards the outside, scentless; pedicels ¼–½ in. long. Calyx-lobes broadly oblong, obtuse, more or less hispid with short appressed hairs. Corolla rotate; tube short; limb spreading, lobes rounded. Fruit ½–¾ in. diam.—''Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 196; F. Muell. Veg. Chath. Is. 32; Buch. in Trans. N.Z. Inst.'' vii. (1875) t. 12.

A small creeping densely matted perennial herb, glabrous or nearly so. Leaves small, all opposite, elliptic-oblong, obtuse, quite entire; petioles broad, connate at the base. Flowers terminating short axillary branchlets, minute, solitary, tetramerous. Calyx persistent, deeply 4-fid; segments ovate, obtuse. Corolla slightly longer than the calyx, subrotate; tube very short, naked; limb with 4 ovate lobes imbricate in the bud. Stamens 4, inserted at the base of the sinus between the corolla-lobes; filaments as long or rather longer than the anthers; anthers 2-celled, small, rounded, dorsifixed. Ovary 4-partite to the base; style erect from between the lobes, twice as long as the ovary; stigma small. Nutlets 4, attached by a small base, rounded at the back and top, setulose, longer than the persistent calyx and style. Seed erect, albuminous; embryo cylindrical, almost as long as the albumen; cotyledons equalling the radicle.

1. T. Hamiltonii, ''Petrie in Hook. Ic. Plant.'' t. 2250.—Forming densely matted patches several inches in diameter. Leaves $1⁄12$–$1⁄10$ in. long, rather fleshy, obscurely dotted. Flowers minute, $1⁄12$ in. diam.— Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxv. (1893) 269. Tillaea Hamiltonii, Kirk ex W. S. Hamilton in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xvii. (1885) 292.

Otago—Lowlands in the south and east. Between the Lee Stream and Taieri; Hindon; Waipahi; Invercargill, Petrie! Makarewa River, W. S. Hamilton! Sea-level to 1800 ft.