Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Hypoxis, Linn
1. Hypoxis, Linn.
Small herbs. Rhizome bulbous or tuberous, coated with a membranous or fibrous sheath. Leaves radical, narrow, flat or terete, often hairy. Scape 1- or many-flowered. Perianth regular, tube wanting; segments 6, nearly equal, spreading. Stamens 6, inserted on the base of the segments and shorter than them; anthers erect, linear or obloug, dorsifixed. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; ovules numerous in each cell, 2-seriate; style short, columnar; stigmas 3, stout, erect, distinct or connate. Capsule globose or oblong, membranous, 3-valved or circumscissile below the top. Seeds small, subglobose; testa crustaceous, shining, usually more or less beaked at the hilum.
Species over 50, mainly confined to southern or tropical Africa, a few only in Asia, Australasia, or America.
1. | H. pusilla, Hook. f. Fl. Tasm. ii. 36, t. 130 B.— Very small, 1–2 in. high. Rhizome globose, bulb-like, clothed with the setose remains of the old leaves, ⅓ in. diam. Leaves 3–6, ½–2 in. long, filiform, wiry, flexuous, grooved down the inner face, base widened into a scarious sheath. Scapes shorter than the leaves, 1–3-flowered. Flowers small, ⅙ in. diam. Perianth-segments ovate-lanceolate, acute. Stamens short, not half as long as the perianth-segments; anthers linear, basifixed. Stigmas lanceolate, free. Capsule glo-bose, ⅛ in. diam.— Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 275; Benth. Fl. Austral. vi. 449. H. hygrometrica, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 253 (not of R. -Br.). North Island: Hawke's Bay, C olenso. South Island: Marlborough— Sandy ground near the mouth of the Wairau River, J. Macmahon! Canter-bury—Banks Peninsula, Travers, Armstrong! Cockayne! Canterbury Plains, Armstrong! November–April. Probably not uncommon on the eastern side of the South Island, but very easily overlooked. Also a native of Victoria and Tasmania. |