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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
3. Gaya, H. B. K
3. Gaya, H. B. K.
Herbs or shrubs, rarely small trees, usually tomentose with stellate hairs. Flowers pedunculate, axillary or terminal. Bracteoles wanting. Calyx 5-fid. Staminal column split at the apex into numerous filaments. Ovary many-celled; style-branches as many as the cells, filiform; stigmas capitate or truncate; ovules solitary in each cell. Mature carpels membranous, connivent at the apex, separable from the axis, 2-valved at the back and leaving a free page 80appendage within which arises from the base of the carpel and partly surrounds the seed. Seed pendulous or horizontal.
Species 8–12, all South American except the present one, which is endemic in New Zealand.
| 1. | G. Lyallii, J. E. Baker in Journ. Bot. xxx. (1892) 137.—A small graceful spreading tree 15–30 ft. in height; young branches, leaves, petioles, and inflorescence more or less covered with stellate pubescence. Leaves on slender petioles 1–2 in. long; blade 2–4 in., ovate, acuminate, usually deeply doubly crenate, sometimes shortly lobed and crenate, cordate and truncate at the base, membranous. Flowers abundantly produced, large, ¾–1 in. diam., white, in axillary fascicles of 3–5, rarely solitary; peduncles slender, 1–2 in., ebracteolate. Calyx broadly campanulate, 5-lobed; lobes triangular. Petals obliquely obovate, retuse towards the apex. Staminal column short, swollen at the base; filaments numerous, long, filiform. Ovary 10–15-celled; styles long, slender, filiform, free to below the middle; stigmas obliquely capitate. Fruit ½ in. diam., globose, slightly depressed, of about 12 much-flattened membranous reniform carpels. Carpels not winged, 2-valved, 1-seeded. Seed much compressed.—Kirk, Students' Fl. 72. Hoheria Lyallii, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 31, t. 11. Plagianthus Lyallii, Asa Gray ex Hook. f. l.c. ii. 326; Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 30; Bot. Mag. t. 5935; Kirk, Forest Fl. t. 134. Sida Lyallii, F. Muell. Veg. Chath. Is. 11.
South Island: Subalpine forests from Nelson to Otago, most plentiful on the western side. Ascends to 3500 ft. Lacebark. December–January. One of the most beautiful trees of the New Zealand flora, often forming a broad fringe to the subalpine beech forests. It is partly deciduous at high elevations, but is certainly evergreen in the river-valleys of Westland and Nelson, where it is very abundant. There are apparently two forms of flowers, one with long styles almost equalling the stamens, another with styles less than half their length. |