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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
2. Discaria, Hook
2. Discaria, Hook.
Much-branched rigid shrubs or small trees, with opposite often spinous branchlets. Leaves opposite or fascicled, sometimes wanting. Flowers axillary. Calyx membranous, free or adnate to the ovary at the base; limb campanulate, 4–5-lobed. Petals 4–5, hooded, often wanting. Stamens 4–5; filaments short. Disc adnate to the base of the calyx-tube, annular. Ovary more or less sunk in the disc, 3-lobed, 3-celled; style slender; stigma 3-lobed. Drupe (or capsule) dry, coriaceous, 3-lobed, endocarp separating into 3 2-valved crustaceous cocci. Seeds with a coriaceous testa.
Species about 16, mostly natives of extratropical and alpine South America, with 1 species in Australia and another in New Zealand.
| 1. | D. Toumatou, Raoul, Choix de Plantes, 29, t. 29.—A much-branched thorny bush or small tree 2–15 ft. high or even more, glabrous or slightly puberulous. Branches divaricating, flexuous; young ones green, terete; branchlets reduced to opposite distichous or decussate rigid spines 1½–2 in. long. Leaves often wanting, fascicled below the axils of the spines or opposite on short shoots, ½–¾ in. long, linear-obovate or oblong-obovate, obtuse. Flowers small, ⅙ in. diam., greenish-white, fascicled with the leaves below the axils of the spines; pedicels short, puberulous. Calyx-lobes 4–5, reflexed. Petals wanting. Capsule ⅕ in. diam., globose, deeply 3-lobed.—Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 44; Kirk, Forest Fl. t. 136; Students' Fl. 93. D. australis, Hook., var. apetala, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 47. Notophœna Toumatou, Miers in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. iii. v. (1860) 271.
North and South Islands: Waikato River to the Bluff, common. Ascends to 3500 ft. [unclear: Tumætukuru.]. November–January. Can only be distinguished from the Australian and Tasmanian D. australis by the absence of petals. It attains a large size in the cool mountain-valleys of the South Island, but near the coast is usually low and scrubby. |