Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/794

754

Marine submerged plants. Rhizomes slender, branched, creeping and rooting at the nodes, often matted. Stems short, slender, leafy, compressed. Leaves distichous, alternate, narrow-linear, grass-like, 1–5-nerved, sheathing at the base; sheaths stipuliform, with inflexed margins. Flowers monœcious, the males and females placed alternately upon one face of a narrow spadix enclosed within the dilated membranous base of a leaf. Perianth wanting. Male flowers: Anther solitary, sessile, oblong, cylindric, curved, 1-celled, dehiscence longitudinal; pollen confervoid. Female flowers: Carpel solitary, laterally attached above the middle, narrowed into a short subulate style; stigmas 2, capillary; ovule pendulous from the apex of the cell. Eipe carpel oblong, membranous, bursting irregularly. Seed pendulous; testa membranous, often striated; embryo large, deeply grooved, the linear incurved cotyledonary end sunk in the groove.

1. Z. nana, ''Roth, Enum. Pl. Phæn. Germ.'' i. 8.—Rhizomes slender, matted. Leaves 3–9 in. long, rarely more, $1⁄16$–$1⁄10$ in. broad, narrow-linear, truncate or obscurely notched at the tip, with 3–5 faint parallel nerves on each side of the stout midrib and distant transverse veinlets, margins thickened. Floral sheaths or spathes ½–1 in. long, on peduncles of equal length, the blade of the leaf continued above the sheath, the sheath itself much wider than the blade. Spadix 6–12-flowered, its margins with transverse membranous appendages folded inwards, one over each carpel. Stigmas usually protruding through the slit of the spathe. Fruit about $1⁄10$ in. long, oblong, obscurely striate.—''Benth. Fl. Austral.'' vii. 176; Kirk in Article 54#392|Trans. N.Z. Inst. x. (1878) 392. Z. Muelleri, ''Irmisch ex Aschers. in Linnæa'', xxxv. (1867–68) 168.]]

2. L. [sic] tasmanica, ''Martens ex Aschers. in Linnæa,'' xxxv. (1867–68) 168 (?).—Rhizomes slender, wide-creeping. Leaves 9–18 in. long, $1⁄6$–$1⁄16$ in, broad, narrow-linear, rounded at the tip, not truncate, with 1–3 stout nerves on each side of the midrib and several finer ones between, cross-veinlets distant. Flowers and fruit not seen.—Z. marina, ''Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 742 (not of Linn.)''.

Not uncommon in sandy or muddy places along the coasts, often in water of considerable depth.