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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

4. Homalanthus, A. Juss

4. Homalanthus, A. Juss.

Glabrous shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate, petiolate, broad, entire, often glaucous; stipules deciduous. Flowers in terminal racemes, small, apetalous, monoecious. Male flowers: Very numerous, occupying all the upper portion of the raceme. Calyx of 1 or 2 minute flat appressed sepals. Stamens 6–50; filaments very short; anther - cells distinct, divaricate, longitudinally 2 - valved. Female flowers: Few or solitary at the base of the raceme. Calyx 2–3-parfcite. Ovary 2–3-celled; styles 2–3, linear, entire; ovules 1 in each cell. Capsule didymous or trigonous, fleshy, indehiscent or splitting into 2–3 2-valved cocci. Seeds with a fleshy aril.

Species 7–8, scattered through the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Malay Archipelago.

  • 1. H. polyandrus, Cheesem. — A handsome slender tree 10–25 ft. high, everywhere perfectly glabrous; branches brittle, terete, marked with the prominent; scars of the fallen leaves. Leaves in young plants 3–12 in. diam., in old much smaller, 2–4 in. long, broadly triangular-ovate or rhomboid-orbicular, acute, membranous, somewhat undulate, glaucous beneath; petiole as long or longer than the blade; stipules ¾ in. or more. Racemes slender, erect, 4–8 in. long. Male flowers: Very numerous, rather loosely placed, 1/12 in. diam.; bracts minute, 1–2-glandular at the base. Stamens about 40, very short, closely packed in a globose head. Female flowers: 1 to 4 at the base of the raceme, on long slender pedicels, drooping. Capsule ½–⅔ in., trigonous, 3-celled, splitting into 3 cocci. Seed enveloped in a yellowish aril, frequently persistent on the axis of the fruit. — H. nutans, Hook. f. in Journ. Linn. Soc. i. 127 (not of Guill.). Carumbium polvandrum, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 248; Cheesem. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xx. (1888) 172.

    Kermadec Islands: Sunday Island, plentiful; Macaulay Island, a few plants in the crater-basin, T. F. C. Flowers most of the year.

    Endemic, but very closely allied to the Polynesian H. pedicellatus, Benth. (Carumbium nutans, Muell. Arg.), principally differing in the larger number of stamens.