Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/658

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Parasitic shrubs. Leaves opposite or rarely alternate, entire, coriaceous. Flowers hermaphrodite, often highly coloured, yellow or orange or red, rarely white or greenish, in axillary racemes or cymes, rarely solitary. Perianth double; outer (calyx) adnate to the ovary; limb short, truncate or 4–6-toothed; inner (corolla) tubular, of 4–6 free or more or less connate petals, their tips ultimately spreading or reflexed. Stamens as many as the petals and inserted on them; filaments distinct; anthers adnate or versatile. Ovary inferior; style filiform; stigma terminal. Fruit a berry.

1. L. micranthus, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 100.—A perfectly glabrous bushy shrub 2–5 ft. high; branches terete, the younger ones flattened and 2-edged. Leaves opposite, 1½–3 in. long, oblong or elliptic-oblong or oblong-obovate, rounded at the tip, narrowed into a stout petiole about ⅓ in. long, thick and coriaceous, veins very obscure. Panicles small, ½–¾ in. long, axillary, trichotomously branched, many-flowered; branches slender, divaricating. Flowers minute, greenish, ⅛ in. long. Calyx-tube cylindrical; limb very minute, truncate. Corolla of 4 linear-oblong spreading petals, free to the base. Anthers small, oblong, basifixed. Style stout, short, suddenly twisted up and down at the middle; stigma lateral, capitate. Berry bright-yellow, oblong, viscid, ⅓ in. long.—''Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 107. Viscum antarcticum, ''A. Cunn. Precur. n. 483 (not of Forst.)''.