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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
4. Hibiscus, Linn
4. Hibiscus, Linn.
Herbs, shrubs, or trees; glabrous, tomentose, or hispid, the hairs usually stellate. Leaves very various, often more or less palmately lobed. Flowers large and showy. Bracteoles numerous, rarely few, usually narrow, free or connate at the base. Calyx 5-toothed or 5-fid, valvate. Petals 5, adnate at the base to the staminal column. Staminal column truncate or 5-toothed at the summit; filaments many, inserted on the sides of the column; anthers reniform. Ovary 5-celled; ovules 3 or more in each cell; styles 5, spreading; stigmas capitate. Capsule loculicidally 5-valved. Seeds glabrous hairy or woolly.
A large and beautiful genus, abundant in the tropical regions of both hemispheres, a few species only extending into the north or south temperate zones. Both the New Zealand species have a wide distribution outside the colony.
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Annual or biennial, 1–2 ft. Leaves deeply lobed. Flowers axillary 1. H. trionum. Perennial, 3–6 ft.; stem prickly. Leaves broad, lobes shallow. Flowers in terminal racemes 2. H. diversifolius.
| 1. | H. trionum, Linn. Sp. Plant. 697.—A simple or branched annual or biennial 1–2 ft. high, scabrous-pubescent or hispid; branches erect or spreading. Leaves very variable, 1–3 in. long, lower orbicular-cordate with 3–5 shallow lobes, middle and upper deeply 3–5-lobed or partite; segments oblong or lanceolate, coarsely toothed or incised. Flowers on short axillary peduncles, large, 1–1½ in. diam., pale-yellow with a dark-brown centre. Bracteoles 7–12, narrow-linear, hispid. Calyx membranous, inflated, with numerous raised hispid veins, shortly 5-lobed. Capsule ovoid-globose, hirsute, enclosed in the bladdery calyx. Seeds glabrous.—Bot. Mag. t. 209; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 28; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 31; Benth. Fl. Austral. i. 210; Kirk, Students' Fl. 73. H. vesicarius, Cav. Diss. iii. 171, t. 64, f. 2; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 607; Raoul, Choix de Plantes, 48.
North Island: Sheltered places near the sea, from the North Cape to the Auckland Isthmus, rare and local. Hicks Bay, East Cape, Bishop Williams! South Island: South Wanganui, Lyall. In most tropical countries outside America. |
| 2. | H. diversifolius, Jacq. Ic. Plant. Rar. t. 551.—A tall stout and rigid perennial 3–6 ft. high, often woody at the base; branches, petioles, and nerves of the leaves covered with short conical prickles. Leaves on stout petioles 2–3 in. long; blade 2–4 in., broadly cordate or nearly orbicular, irregularly toothed, angular or slightly 3–5-lobed, scabrous. Flowers in terminal racemes, large, handsome, 2–3 in. diam., pale-yellow with a dark centre. Pedicels short; bracts lanceolate or 3-fid. Bracteoles 10, linear. Calyx-lobes lanceolate, bristly. Capsule ovoid, acuminate, densely hispid.—Benth. Fl. Austral. i. 213; Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst. iii. (1871) 163; Students' Fl. 73.
North Island: Moist sandy places near the sea, from the North Cape to Hokianga and the Bay of Islands, rare, Colenso, Kirk! R. H. Matthews! T. F. C. Also in Australia, the Pacific islands, tropical Africa, &c. Both this and the preceding species are being rapidly destroyed by cattle, fires, &c., and are now rare or almost extinct in localities where they were plentiful twenty or thirty years ago. |