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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Sicyos, Linn
1. Sicyos, Linn.
Climbing or prostrate herbs. Leaves angular or 3–5-lobed. Flowers small, monoecious. Male flowers racemose. Calyx-tube broadly campanulate, 5-toothed. Corolla rotate, deeply 5-partite. Stamens connate into a short column; anthers 2–5, sessile at the top of the column, sinuous; cells confluent. Female flowers capitate on a short peduncle, rarely solitary. Calyx-tube adnate with the ovary; limb and corolla as in the males. Ovary 1-celled; style short, 3-fid; ovule solitary, pendulous. Fruit small, coriaceous, dry, indehiscent, covered with barbed spines.
page 190A small genus of about 20 species, mainly from tropical America, but extending to Australia and the Pacific islands. The single New Zealand species has the range of the genus.
| 1. | S. angulata, Linn. Sp. Plant. 1013. — Stems trailing or 'Climbing, usually from 2 ft. to 10 ft. long but sometimes much more, glabrous or more or less scabrid. Leaves on long petioles, 2–6 in. diam. or more, ovate-cordate to reniform, palmately 5–7-lobed, the central lobe the longest, membranous, scabrid with short stiff hairs or almost glabrous; tendrils very long, branched. Flowers ⅓ in. diam., greenish; males racemose on a long peduncle; females often from the same axil, capitate on a short peduncle. Fruits clustered, ½ in. long, ovoid, compressed, •densely covered with barbed spines.—Forst. Proclr. n. 363; A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 323; Hook. f. Fi. Nov. Zel. i. 72; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 82; Benth. Fl. Austral. ii'i. 322; Kirk, Students' Fl. 183. S. australis, Endl. Prodr. Fl. Norf. 67; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 525.
Kermadec Islands: Abundant, attaining a large size, McGillivray, T.F.C. North Island: In various places on the coast, as far south as Hawke's Bay; more plentiful on the outlying islands than on the mainland. South Island: Queen Charlotte Sound, Banks, and Solander. Mawhai. November–March. Also in North and South America, Australia, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, and Polynesia. |