Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/738

698 high, $1⁄12$ in. diam. at the base; sheathing scales few, oblique. Raceme 1–3 in. long, 3–5-flowered; pedicels slender, ⅕ in. long; bracts short, broad, scarious. Flowers brownish tipped with dirty-white, ½ in. long without the ovary, drooping. Perianth ventricose, gibbous at the base, split about half-way down on the anterior side, shortly 5-lobed; lobes rounded-ovate, undulate. Lip hardly shorter than the perianth; lamina linear -oblong, obtuse, with 2 thick median ridges; margins incurved, thickened, slightly crumpled. Column very short, barely ¼ the length of the lip.





Perennial herbs, with a tuberous or bulbous or creeping rhizome. Leaves usually all radical, narrow, equitant and distichous. Flowers hermaphrodite, regular or obliquely irregular, solitary and terminal, or in spikes or corymbs or panicles, or clustered, enclosed within 2 spathaceous usually scarious bracts. Perianth superior, petaloid, marcescent; segments 6, in 2 series, imbricate. Stamens 3, epigynous or inserted on the outer perianth-segments; filaments free or united into a tube; anthers 2-celled, opening outwards. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; style filiform, usually 3-fid above; divisions stigmatic at the end, subulate or narrow or broad, sometimes petaloid; ovules numerous, in the inner angle of each cell, anatropous. Fruit a coriaceous 3-celled usually trigonous capsule, loculicidally 3-valved. Seeds usually numerous, albuminous; embryo short, cylindric.

Perennial herbs with a short creeping rhizome and long fibrous roots. Leaves numerous, densely crowded at the base of the stem, distichously imbricate, equitant, linear or ensiform, flat, rigid. Flowering-stems erect, simple or branched; cauline leaves few. Flowers on slender pedicels, clustered in the axils of sheathing bracts, forming a corymbose-paniculate or subumbellate inflorescence. Perianth regular, tube wanting; segments 6, spreading, free to the base, the 3 inner rather longer and broader.