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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Trithurxa, Hook. f
1. Trithurxa, Hook. f.
Minute tufted and stemless annual herbs. Leaves all radical, filiform. Scapes short, slender, terminating in several spreading bracts enclosing a head of minute flowers. Flowers numerous, densely crowded, each probably consisting of a single stamen and ovary, but the stamens and ovaries so closely placed as to appear irregularly mixed. Perianth wanting. Stamens with a filiform filament and oblong anther. Carpels 3-angled or compressed in the Australian species, not angled in the one found in New Zealand. Styles 2–3 or numerous. Fruiting carpels 2–3-angled in the Australian species, splitting from the base upwards into as many valves as angles.
page 756The genus also includes 2 species found in Australia.
| 1. | T.(?) ineonspicua, Cheesem. n. sp.—A very minute' slender perfectly glabrous annual herb, forming dense moss-like tufts ½–1 in. high. Leaves numerous, all radical, linear-filiform, strict, erect terete, tapering gradually to an acute point. Scapes very short in the flowering stage, lengthening to one-half or three-quarters the length of the leaves when in fruit. Bracts 3–4, erect or erecto-patent, linear-lanceolate, acute, thin and membranous, 1/12–⅛ in. long. Stamens not seen. Ovaries 6–12 or more, densely crowded bright-red, stipitate, ovoid or oblong-ovoid, smooth, not angled nor compressed. Styles numerous, very delicate, forming a spreading brush at the tip of the ovary and much longer than it. Ripe fruit elliptic-ovoid, quite smooth, pale yellow-brown with a dark spot at each end.
North Island: Auckland—Sandy shores of Lake Ngatu, near Ahipara, H. Carse and R. H. Matthews! A curious little plant, of which I only possess imperfect material. It differs in several respects from Trithuria, and may form the type of a new genus. All the flowers I have examined are without stamens, so that the stamens are either very fugitive, or the flowers are diœcious. |