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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

2. Myosotidium, Hook

2. Myosotidium, Hook.

A stout succulent herb, 1–3 ft. high. Radical leaves large, broadly ovate-cordate or almost reniform; cauline sessile. Flowers blue, in dense corymbose cymes. Calyx deeply 5-partite. Corolla-tube short, throat with 5 protuberances; limb subrotate; lobes 5, spreading, obtuse, imbricate. Stamens 5, affixed to the tube of the corolla; filaments very short; anthers included. Ovary 4-lobed; page 472style very short, thick; stigma capitate. Fruit large, thick and spongy, pyramidal, 4-angled, composed of 4 coriaceous winged nutlets adhering to a central column.

A very remarkable monotypic genus confined to the Clatham Islands.

1.M. nobile, Hook. Bot. Mag. t. 5137.—Perennial, stout, pilose; rootstock long, thick, cylindrical. Radical leaves crowded, 6–12 in. long, broadly ovate-cordate or reniform, petioled, very thick and fleshy, bright-green and glabrous, strongly nerved; cauline few, broadly ovate or oblong, sessile. Cymes dense, sub-globose, 3–6 in. diam., many-flowered. Flowers ½ in. diam., dark-blue in the centre, fading towards the outside, scentless; pedicels ¼–½ in. long. Calyx-lobes broadly oblong, obtuse, more or less hispid with short appressed hairs. Corolla rotate; tube short; limb spreading, lobes rounded. Fruit ½–¾ in. diam.—Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 196; F. Muell. Veg. Chath. Is. 32; Buch. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. vii. (1875) t. 12.

Chatham Islands: Sandy soil near the sea, Travers! Enys!. Chatham Islands Lily.

A noble plant, once very abundant on the coast-line of the Chatham Islands, but now fast becoming rare in a wild state.