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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
3. Eryngium, Linn
3. Eryngium, Linn.
Perennial herbs. Leaves usually rigid and coriaceous, spinous-toothed, entire lobed or dissected. Flowers sessile in dense heads, with a bracteole under each flower, and a whorl of rigid often spinous-pointed bracts at the base of the head. Calyx-tube clothed with hyaline scales; teeth rigid, acute. Petals narrow, erect, deeply notched, with a long inflected point. Fruit ovoid or obovoid, scarcely compressed, covered with hyaline scales or tubercles; carpels semi-terete, primary ridges obscure, secondary wanting; vittæ inconspicuous or absent.
A large genus of over 150 species, spread through most temperate and subtropical regions, but most plentiful in South America and western Asia. The single species found in New Zealand extends to Australia as well.
| 1. | E. vesiculosum, Lab. Nov. Holl. Pl. i. 73, t. 98.—A harsh and rigid spinous herb 2–9 in. high, with tufted radical leaves and prostrate stems much resembling stolons but not rooting. Radical leaves crowded, rosulate, 3–6 in. long, lanceolate or oblanceolate or spathulate-lanceolate, deeply toothed or almost pinnatifid, the [unclear: teetn] page 204spinescent, narrowed into a broad flat petiole. Cauline leaves much smaller, opposite, cuneate or linear-cuneate, with fewer spinous teeth. Peduncles radical or from the nodes, ½–2 in. long, bearing a single globose or broadly ovoid head ½–¾ in. diam. Involucral bracts linear or lanceolate, rigid and spinous, spreading, far exceeding the flowers. Calyx-tube densely scaly.—Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 85; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 90; Berth. Fl. Austral, iii. 370.
North and South Islands: On sandy beaches from the East Cape to the north of Otago, but often local. December–January. Also in Australia and Tasmania. |