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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Phebalium, Vent
1. Phebalium, Vent.
Shrubs. Leaves alternate, simple, entire or slightly toothed, pellucid-dotted. Flowers usually in axillary or terminal corymbs, rarely solitary. Calyx small, 5-lobed or -partite. Petals 5, imbricate or valvate. Stamens 8–10, longer or shorter than the petals; filaments filiform, glabrous. Ovary 2–5-partite almost to the base; style simple; stigma small, capitellate; ovules 2 in each cell, superposed. Cocci 2–5, truncate or rostrate; endocarp cartilaginous and separating elastically. Seeds usually solitary.
A genus of 28 species, all of which are confined to Australia with the exception of the present one, which is endemic in New Zealand.
| 1. | P. nudum, Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 568.—A graceful much-branched perfectly glabrous shrub 4–12 ft. high; branchlets slender, with reddish bark. Leaves alternate, 1–1½ in. long, linear-oblong or narrow oblong-lanceolate, coriaceous, obtuse, obscurely crenate, narrowed into short petioles or almost sessile, pellucid-dotted. Flowers ⅓ in. diam., white, fragrant, in terminal many-flowered corymbs; pedicels short, scurfy. Calyx very small, with 5 broad lobes. Petals 5, lanceolate or linear, obtuse; margins involute. Stamens much longer than the petals. Cocci 1–4, but usually only 1 or 2 ripen, obtusely rhomboid, wrinkled, splitting into 2 valves.—Raoul, Choix, 48; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 44; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 39; Kirk, Students' Fl. 85.
North Island: Hilly forests from Kaitaia southwards to the Thames River, ascending to 2500 ft. Mairehau. October–December. Highly aromatic in all its parts. The flowers have been used for the extraction of a perfume. |