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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
7. Crantzia, Nutt
7. Crantzia, Nutt.
A small creeping herb. Leaves linear, terete or compressed, undivided, transversely septate. Umbels simple, with minute in-volucral bracts. Flowers minute. Calyx-teeth small. Petals concave, acute, imbricate in the bud. Fruit ovoid-globose, slightly flattened laterally. Carpels nearly terete, with 5 ribs separated by furrows, the lateral ribs forming a thick and corky mass near the commissure. Vittæ 1 under each furrow and 2 at the commissure.
A monotypic genus, found in the United States and Mexico, extra-tropical and Andine South America, Australia and Tasmania, and New Zealand.
| 1. | C. lineata, Nutt. Gen. N. Amer. Pl i. 177.—Perfectly glabrous. Rhizome slender, creeping and rooting at the nodes, 2–6 in. long or more. Leaves usually tufted at the nodes, variable in size, ½–4 in. long, narrow-linear, fistulose, terete or sub-compressed, obtuse at the tip, transversely septate internally. Peduncles axillary, shorter than the leaves, filiform, bearing a single 2–8-flowered umbel. Flowers white. Fruit 1/12 in. long.—Hook. f. Fl. Antarct. ii. 287, t. 100; Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 87; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 89; Benth. Fl. Austral. iii. 374; Kirk, Students' Fl. 199.
North and South Islands, Stewart Island, Chatham Islands: Abundant in wet places from the North Cape southwards. Sea-level to 2500 ft. November–February. A very variable little plant. When completely submerged the leaves are fistulose and terete, softer in texture, and usually much larger; but when growing in places that are dry for a considerable part of the year the leaves are often much compre-sed and minute. |