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Selliera, Cav.
Small glabrous creeping and rooting perennial herbs. Leaves alternate or fascicled at the nodes, entire. Flowers axillary, sessile or pedunculate. Calyx-tube adnate to the ovary; limb 5-lobed or -partite. Corolla oblique, split to the base at the back; limb of 5 nearly equal lobes, at length digitately spreading; the margins inflexed or winged. Stamens 5, epigynous; anthers free. Ovary inferior, more or less completely 2-celled; ovules numerous in each cell. Style undivided; stigma short, truncate, enclosed within the cup-shaped indusium. Fruit fleshy, indehiscent. Seeds usually numerous, compressed or irregularly shaped.
A small genus of two species, one of which is confined to Western Australia; the other occurs in Australia, Tasmania, and Chili, as well as in New Zealand.
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S. radicans,
Cav. Ic. v. 49, t. 474.—A glabrous creeping and rooting perennial; stems 1–10 in. long, usually matted and interlaced, forming broad flat patches. Leaves variable in size, ½–4 in. long, linear-spathulate to oblong-spathulate or obovate-spathulate, obtuse, narrowed into a long petiole, quite entire, nerveless, very thick and fleshy. Peduncles axillary, 1- or rarely 2-flowered, shorter than the leaves, with 2 subulate bracts above the middle. Flowers white, ⅓ in. long. Calyx - lobes lanceolate or linear. Corolla-lobes ovate, acute, not winged. Fruit fleshy, ovoid or obovoid, about ¼ in. long. Seeds compressed, orbicular, narrowly
winged.—
Handb. N.Z. Fl. 173;
Fl. Tasm. i. 231;
Benth. Fl. Austral. iv. 82. S. fasciculata,
Buch, in Trans. N.Z. Inst. iii. (1871) 211. S. microphylla,
Col. l.c. xxii. (1890) 473. Goodenia repens,
Labill. PI. Nov. Holl. i. 53, t. 76:
A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 228;
A. Cunn. Precur. n. 428;
Raoul, Choix, 45;
Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 156.
North and South Islands, Stewart Island: Common in muddy or sandy or rocky places near the sea. Inland by the margins of the larger lakes, &c, ascending to over 2500 ft. at the base of Ruapehu. November–February.
For notes on the fertilisation, see a paper by myself in the Trans. N.Z. Inst. ix. p. 542.
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