Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/529

Limosella.]

Small tufted creeping glabrous marsh or aquatic plants. Leaves opposite or fascicled at the nodes, rarely alternate on barren shoots, long-petioled, linear or spathulate, quite entire. Flowers minute, axillary, solitary. Calyx campanulate, 5-toothed or -lobed. Corolla campanulate or almost rotate; tube short; lobes 5, nearly equal. Stamens 4; filaments filiform; anther-cells confluent. Ovary 2-celled at the base; style short; stigma clavate or subcapitate. Capsule obscurely dehiscent or septicidally 2-valved; valves thin, membranous. Seeds numerous, small, ovoid, transversely rugulose.

1. L. tenuifolia, Nutt. Gen. N. Amer. ii. 43.—Annual or perennial, creeping and tufted, often forming patches 1–2 in. diam. or more. Leaves densely fascicled, ½–1½ in. long, rarely more, narrow-linear or linear-subulate, often with little or no distinction between petiole and blade, but sometimes dilated towards the tip and becoming narrow linear-spathulate. Flowers minute, $1⁄12$ in. diam., axillary, on very short pedicels. Calyx 5-toothed. Corolla rather longer than the calyx; lobes ovate-oblong. Capsule ovoid-globose, exceeding the calyx when mature.—L. australis, ''R. Br. Prodr.'' 443. L. aquatica var. tenuifolia, ''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 190; Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 204. L. ciliata. Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxi. (1889) 96.

2. L. Curdieana, ''F. Muell. Fragm. Phyt. Austral.'' ix. 166.—A perennial herb with tufts of radical leaves, emitting short thick stolons terminating in other tufts, glabrous in all its parts. Leaves numerous; petiole 2–4 in. long or more, filiform, terete, dilated towards the base; blade ¼–¾ in. long, ovate or ovate-oblong, obtuse, suddenly contracted into the petiole, rather thin; main veins 3–5, parallel, with reticulating veinlets between. Flowers crowded at the bases of the petioles, sessile, minute. Calyx $1⁄10$ in. long or less, tipped with 5 minute teeth. Corolla altogether included in the