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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Claytonia, Linn
1. Claytonia, Linn.
Annual or perennial low-growing glabrous and succulent herbs. Radical leaves petiolate, cauline opposite or alternate. Flowers solitary or in terminal or axillary racemes or cymes. Sepals 2, persistent. Petals 5, hypogynous. Stamens 5, adhering to the petals at the base. Ovary free; ovules few; style 3-cleft. Capsule globose or ovoid, membranous, 3-valved. Seeds reniform or orbicular, flattened.
Species about 20, all from North America or north-eastern Asia with the exception of the following one, which is confined to Australia and New Zealand.
| 1. | C. australasica, Hook. f. in Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 293. —A perfectly glabrous tender and succulent usually matted plant, with slender creeping stems 1–6 in. long. Leaves very variable in size, ¼–1½ in. long, alternate or in distant pairs, narrow-linear or linear-spathulate, obtuse, dilated into broad membranous sheaths at the base. Flowers large, ¼–½ in. diam., white or rose, terminal or leaf-opposed, solitary or in few-flowered lax racemes; pedicels long, slender. Sepals small, broadly orbicular. Petals much longer, broad-obovate. Capsule globose, mucronate, usually slightly exceeding the sepals. Seeds generally 3, black, smooth and shining. —Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 73; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 26; Benth. Fl. Austral. i. 177; Kirk, Students' Fl. 65.
North Island: Ruahine Range and Ruapehu, H. Hill! Petrie! E. W. Andrews; Mount Egmont, Buchanan, T. F. C. South Island and Stewart Island: Common in mountain districts throughout. Ascends to over 6000 ft. on Mount Egmont, and descends to sea-level in Otago and Stewart Island. A variable plant. When growing in dry or exposed places it is often very small and densely tufted; but in watery situations the stems lengthen out considerably and the leaves become longer. Mr. Buchanan (Trans. N.Z. Inst. iii. 210) has described two varieties characterized by the peduncles in one being 2-flowered, and in the other racemose; but I find the number of flowers to be very inconstant. |