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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
4. Actinotus, Labill
4. Actinotus, Labill.
Annual or perennial herbs, erect and branching or low and densely tufted. Leaves toothed, lobed or ternately divided. Umbels simple, with an involucre of spreading bracts. Calyx-limb 5-toothed, rarely inconspicuous. Petals 5, unguiculate or spathulate or wanting. Ovary 1-celled, 1-ovuled; styles 2, often united at the base. Fruit ovate, of a single carpel, compressed from front to back; ribs 5, often obscure.
A small genus of about 10 species, confined to Australia and New Zealand. It is remarkable for the 1-celled ovary and single carpel of the fruit.
| 1. | A. novæ-zealandiæ, Petrie in Trans. N.Z. INst. xiii. (1881) 324.—Small, densely tufted. Stems creeping, interlaced and matted, forming flat compact patches. Branches villous or shaggy with soft white hairs. Leaves 1/12–⅙ in. long, oblong or oblong-[unclear: spathulate], narrowed into a long sheathing petiole, quite entire, coriaceous and fleshy, glandular at the apex, glabrous or with a pencil of hairs at the tip. Peduncle ¼–¾ in. long, usually villous with soft spreading hairs, naked or with a single bract towards the top. Involucral bracts usually 5, broadly ovate or almost rounded, obtuse. Flowers 4–5. Calyx-limb apparently wanting. Petals absent. Stamens 2. Carpels somewhat compressed, convex on the outer face, obscurely ribbed.—Kirk, Students' Fl 195. A. bellidioides, Benth. Fl. Austral. iii. 369 (in part). Hemiphues suffocata, Hook. f. in Lond. Journ. Bot. vi. (1847) 471. H. bellidioides var. suffocata, Hook. f. Fl. Tasm. i. 158, t. 36A.
South Island: Nelson—Mountains near the Heaphy River, Dall! Mount Rochfort, Rev. F. H. Spencer! W. Townson! Otago—Blue Mountains, Petrie! Longwood Range, Kirk! Stewart Island: Apparently not uncommon, Petrie! Thomson! Kirk! Sea-level to 3500 ft. Also in Tasmania. |