Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Colensoa, Hook
1. Colensoa, Hook.
A tall erect leafy herb, often woody at the base. Leaves large, alternate, doubly serrate. Flowers large, in terminal racemes. Calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, limb 5-partite. Corolla oblique, curved, split to the base at the back, 2-lipped; upper lip of 2 linear acute lobes, lower of 3 oblong spreading ones. Stamens exserted; filaments pubescent, free for the greater part of their length; anthers cohering into a tube, pilose on the connective and at the tips. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovules numerous, attached to broad peltate placentas; style long; stigma 2-lobed, lobes large, oblong, spreading. Berry globose, thinly fleshy, crowned by the persistent calyx-lobes, indehiscent. Seeds numerous, subglobose, tuberculate.
A genus of a single species, endemic in the northern portion of the North Island. It is very closely allied to Pratia, differing chiefly in the tall erect habit, in the racemose inflorescence, and in the large stigmatic lobes.
1. | C. physaloides, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 157.—Stem flexuose, smooth, sparingly branched, 1–4 ft. high. Leaves on slender petioles 2–5 in. long; blade 3–7 in. long, ovate, acute, unequally doubly serrate, thin and membranous, conspicuously veined, glabrous or with a few sparse soft hairs. Racemes terminal, 5–15-flowered, shorter than the leaves; pedicels slender, bracteolate at the base. Corolla 1½–2 in. long, pale-blue, pubescent. Berry ½ in. diam. bluish, coriaceous.— Handb. N.Z. Fl. 170; Bot. Mag. t. 6864. Lobelia physaloides, A. Cunn. Precur, n. 425; Raoul, Choix, 45; Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 555, 556. North Island: From the Three Kings Islands and the North Cape southwards to the Bay of Islands, not common, A. Cunningham, Colenso! &c.; Sail Rock (off Whangarei Harbour), Miss Shakespear! Oru. December–March. |