Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/671

Paratrophis.] spicuous, cymose or fascicled or capitate, rarely solitary, sometimes crowded on a variously shaped receptacle with or without an involucre. Perianth simple, herbaceous, of 1–5 equal or unequal lobes or segments, imbricate or valvate in bud, in the female flowers often smaller and with fewer segments, rarely absent. Stamens generally the same number as the divisions of the perianth and opposite to them; filaments short and erect, or longer and then inflexed in bud, sometimes elastic; anthers 2-celled, dehiscing lengthwise. Ovary superior, or rarely more or less inferior, 1-celled; style terminal or lateral, simple or 2-partite with stigmatose branches, or reduced to a sessile fringed or plumose stigma; ovule solitary. Fruit simple, a small drupe or berry or achene, or (in genera not found in New Zealand) compound and composed of a confluent mass of the fruits and perianths of several or many flowers. Seed erect or pendulous; albumen present or more generally wanting; embryo straight or curved, radicle superior.

Trees with milky juice. Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate, crenate or almost entire, penninerved; stipules small, lateral, caducous. Flowers diœcious, in axillary or rarely terminal soli-