Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/655

Drapetes.]

Small prostrate spreading or densely cufted shrubby plants. Leaves small, alternate, imbricate, concave. Flowers hermaphrodite or polygamo-diœcious, sessile in small terminal heads. Perianth tubular or funnel-shaped; lobes 4, spreading; throat usually furnished with 1 or 2 scales opposite each lobe, rarely naked. Stamens 4, inserted on the throat of the perianth and alternate with its lobes; filaments short, filiform; anthers oblong. Hypogynous scales wanting. Ovary sessile, 1-celled; style long; stigma capitate; ovule solitary, pendulous. Fruit a small drupe; epicarp thin, fleshy; endocarp crustaceous. Seed pendulous, cotyledons broad, thick.

1. D. Dieffenbachii, ''Hook. in Lond. Journ. Bot.'' ii. (1843) 497, t. 17.—A small creeping and rooting much-branched plant; stems woody at the base, 3–12 in. long; branches stout or slender, scarred, ascending at the tips, glabrous or slightly villous with short white hairs. Leaves usually close-set and imbricating, but sometimes distant on barren shoots, suberect, often incurved at the tips, $1⁄10$–$1⁄6$ in. long, linear or linear-lingalate, obtuse, concave in front, convex on the back, grooved or striate or almost smooth, glabrous or nearly so when old, but the upper half of the margins and the apex ciliate when young. Flowers small, polygamo-diœcious, in 3–8-flowered heads at the tips of the branches, sunk amongst the uppermost leaves. Male perianth about ⅙ in. long, funnel-shaped, the lobes about ⅓ the length of the tube. Scales very variable, sometimes a single entire one at the base of each lobe, but more often the scale is 2-lobed or divided to the base into 2 distinct but closely approximate scales. Stamens with long slender filaments, the anthers almost reaching the top of the lobes. Ovary and style very small, abortive. Female (or hermaphrodite) perianth smaller and broader. Anthers much smaller, usually