Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
3. Notospartium, Hook. f
3. Notospartium, Hook. f.
Leafless shrubs with slender much-compressed pendulous branchlets. Flowers rather small, in lateral racemes. Calyx campanulate, 5-toothed; teeth short, about equal. Standard obovate-obcordate, narrowed into a short claw, shortly reflexed; wings oblong, shorter than the keel, with an incurved auricle at the base; keel hatchet-shaped, obtuse. Upper stamen free, remainder connate into a sheath. Ovary sessile or nearly so, linear; ovules numerous; style incurved. Pod shortly stipitate, linear, straight or falcate, compressed, 3–10-jointed, membranous, indehiscent; beak short, Seeds 1 to each joint, oblong; radicle twisted, with a double flexure.
A genus of 2 closely allied species, both confined to New Zealand. It has the leafless habit and compressed branchlets of Carmichœlia, but differs in the linear many-jointed pod, and in other respects.
Flowers pink. Pods ¾–1½ in. long, ⅛ in. wide, straight 1. N. Carmichœliœ. Flowers purple. Pods ¾–1 in. long, 1/15 in. wide, falcate, torulose 2. N. torulosum.
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1. N. Carmichæliæ, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 51.—A slender much-branched shrub 4–10 ft. high. Branchlets 1/20–1/10 in. broad, glabrous, compressed, grooved, with distant alternate scales. Leaves only seen on young plants, 1-foliolate, obcordate or orbicular, entire or emarginate, sometimes mucronate. Racemes 1–2 in. long, 8–20-flowered; pedicels longer than the calyces, and with the rachis silky-pubescent. Flowers ¼–⅓ in. long, pink. Calyx silky; teeth
page 122South Island: Nelson-Mountains flanking the Clarence Valley, Travers, T. F. C. Marlborough—Kaikoura Mountains, Buchanan! Canterbury—Kowai River, Haast! Coleridge Pass, Enys! Kirk! Otago—Mount St. Bathan's, Petrie! 2000–5000 ft. December–January.