Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/88

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Rigid woody shrubs. Leaves alternate or fascicled, entire or toothed; stipules minute, fugacious. Plowers small, regular, hermaphrodite or unisexual, solitary or fascicled, axillary or on the naked branches below the leaves. Sepals 5, obtuse, united at the base. Petals 5, rounded at the tip. Anthers 5, sessile, connate into a tube surrounding the pistil; connectives terminating in a toothed or fimbriate process, and furnished with an erect scale at the back. Style short; stigma 2-fid, rarely 3–4-fid. Fruit a small subglobose berry; seeds usually 2, rarely 3–4.

1. H. crassifolia, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 17, t. 7.—A low rigid much-branched shrub 2–4 ft. in height; branches tortuous, stout and woody; bark white, furrowed; branchlets pubescent. Leaves alternate or fascicled, very thick and coriaceous, ⅓–1½ in. long, linear-spathulate or linear-obovate, entire sinuate or toothed, rarely lobed, rounded at the apex or retuse; petioles very short. Stipules minute, fugacious. Flowers very small, solitary or few together,