6. Australina, Gaud.

Diffuse or creeping annual or perennial herbs. Leaves alternate, petiolate, crenate-toothed or almost entire; stipules lateral, free. Flowers monœcious, in few-flowered axillary glomerules; glomerules unisexual or androgynous. Male flowers: 1–5 together at the summit of a common peduncle. Perianth irregularly bilabiate, the outer lip inflexed in bud. Stamen solitary. Eudi-mentary ovary wanting. Female flowers solitary or few together, sessile. Perianth ovoid-tubular, mouth contracted and obscurely toothed. Ovary free within the perianth; stigma linear, villous; ovule erect from the base. Achene enclosed in the persistent perianth; pericarp thin, shining. Seed with scanty albumen; cotyledons ovate.

A small genus of 6 species, 2 found in Australia, 1 of them extending to New Zealand, and & natives of South Africa and Abyssinia.

• 1. A. pusilla, Gaud, in Freyc. Voy. Bot. 505. — Stems very slender, creeping and rooting, much and often intricately branched, 3–12 in. long, more or less pubescent. Leaves ⅙–½ in. long, broadly ovate or orbicular or broader than long, rounded at the tip, cuneate or almost truncate at the base, obtusely cre-nate, thin and membranous, pubescent on both surfaces; petiole as long or longer than the blade. Male flowers 2–3 together or solitary; peduncle variable in length, sometimes exceeding the petiole. Perianth irregularly bilabiate, green, membranous, hispid. Stamen large, exserted. Female flowers solitary or 2–3 together, each on a very short peduncle or sessile, in the same or in a different axil to the male inflorescence. Perianth very minute, flask-shaped, 2–3-toothed at the constricted mouth. Style exserted, villous.— Handb. N.Z. Fl. 252; Benth. Fl. Austral. vi. 189. A. novæ-zealandiæ, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 226. A. hispidula, Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xviii. (1886) 266.

  North and South Islands: Dark shaded woods from Hokianga and the Bay of Islands to Foveaux Strait, but often very local. Sea-level to 1000 ft.