Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/624

584 2. A. patula, ''Linn. Sp. Plant.'' 1053.—A very variable erect or decumbent or prostrate annual herb 1–2 ft. high, green and smooth, or sparingly mealy-white. Leaves petiolate, 1–3 in. long, lanceolate to broadly triangular-hastate, acute or obtuse, entire or coarsely sinuate-toothed; the uppermost often smaller and linear, the lowest sometimes opposite. Flowers small, monoecious, in clusters arranged in rather slender spikes, often forming narrow terminal panicles; the male and female flowers mixed or occasionally some of the females form separate axillary clusters. Male perianth small, 5-partite. Fruiting-bracts ovate-rhomboid or deltoid, acute, the disc smooth or tubercled; margins toothed or entire.—''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 215; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 232; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' v. 173.

3. A. Buchanani, T. Kirk, MSS.—An excessively branched prostrate herb, forming broad depressed greyish-white patches 3–9 in. across; stem woody at the base; branchlets slender, wiry, terete. Leaves shortly petiolate or almost sessile, ⅛–⅓ in. long, oblong or oblong-ovate to suborbicular, rounded at the tip, quite entire, both surfaces densely clothed with white scurfy tomentum. Flowers minute, monœcious. Males in few-flowered clusters in the axils of the upper leaves or terminal, sometimes solitary. Perianth densely farinose, 5-partite; segments oblong, obtuse, incurved at the tip. Stamens 5, exserted; filaments filiform. Females solitary or in clusters of 2–5 in the lower axils, occasionally a few females at the base of the male clusters. Fruiting-bracts connate into an ovoid or almost urceolate 2-lipped cup. Utricle suborbicular, compressed, sunk within the base of the bracts.—Chenopodium Buchanani, Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxii. (1898) 447, t. 32, f. 1.

4. A. Billardieri, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 215.—A much-branched glabrous and succulent prostrate herb, everywhere covered with shining watery papillæ; branches 6–18 in. long, spreading on