Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/697

Dacrydium.] 7. D. laxifolium, ''Hook. f. in Hook. Lond. Journ. Bot.'' iv. (1845) 143.—A small prostrate shrub with very slender trailing branches 3–24 in. long; rarely suberect, and reaching a height of 2 ft. Leaves of young plants lax, spreading, ⅕–⅓ in. long, narrow-linear, acute, flat, curved; with the growth of the plant gradually becoming shorter, broader and thicker, and more closely set. Leaves of mature plants varying from ⅛ in. long, linear-oblong, obtuse or subacute, spreading, to $1⁄25$–$1⁄20$ in. long, broadly ovate or oblong, obtuse, keeled or rounded on the back, closely imbricate. Flowers diœcious or monœcious. Males solitary, terminal, sessile, ⅕–¼ in. long. Female flowers solitary and terminal. Nut small, erect, oblong, obtuse with a small curved apiculus, about ⅛ in. long; receptacle sometimes dry, sometimes swollen and succulent.—''Ic. Plant. t. 825; Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 234; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 259; Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst. x. (1878) 388; Forest Fl. t. 87; Pilger in Pflanzenreich,'' iv. 5, 50.

Trees or shrubs; branches often whorled; branchlets flattened and expanded into rigid and coriaceous toothed or lobed leaf-like cladodia. True leaves reduced to linear scales. Flowers monœcious or diœcious. Males fascicled at the tips of the branchlets, catkin-like, peduncled; each peduncle arising from the axil of a leafy bract. Staminal column oblong or cylindrical; anthers numerous, densely spirally imbricate, 2-celled; connective prolonged into an acute claw. Female flowers sessile on the margins of the cladodia or on peduncle-like divisions of the cladodia. Ovuliferous scales 1 or several, thick and fleshy, free. Ovule solitary, erect. Seeds erect, ovoid or oblong, compressed, protruding from the enlarged and fleshy scales, each seated within a cup-shaped aril. Cotyledons 2.