Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/674

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Annual or perennial herbs or small shrubs, more or less armed with stinging hairs. Leaves opposite, petiolate, toothed or lobed, 3–7-nerved; stipules lateral, free or connate. Flowers small, green, monoecious or dioecious, in clusters arranged in axillary simple or branched racemes or panicles. Male flowers: Perianth deeply 4-partite; segments ovate or rounded, concave. Stamens 4, inflexed in bud. Rudimentary ovary cupuliform. Female flowers: Perianth deeply 4-partite; the 2 outer segments smaller than the inner. Ovary straight, ovoid; stigma sessile or nearly so, penicillate; ovule solitary, erect, orthotropous. Acheue ovoid or oblong, compressed, enclosed in the persistent perianth. Seed erect; albumen scanty; cotyledons rounded.

1. U. ferox, Forst. Prodr. n. 346.—A slender much-branched shrub, sometimes 6–10 ft. high with a woody trunk 3–4 in. diam. at the base, but usually from 2 to 5 ft.; stinging hairs copious, long, rigid, ⅙–¼ in. long; branchlets, petioles, and under-surface of leaves more or less finely pubescent. Leaves on long slender petioles; blade 2–5 in. long, narrow ovate-triangular to lanceolate-triangular, acuminate, broadest at the base which is truncate or rounded or cordate and often lobed or hastate, thin and membranous; margins deeply and coarsely toothed, the teeth ending in a long rigid bristle; stipules interpetiolar, entire. Flowers diœcious, in axillary racemiform panicles 1–2 in. long. Perianth densely pubescent, females smaller than the males. Nut ovoid, compressed, about $1⁄20$ in. long.—''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 354; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 333; Raoul, Choix, 42; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 225; Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 251.