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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
5. Apium, Linn
5. Apium, Linn.
Erect or prostrate glabrous herbs. Leaves ternately or pin-nately divided. Umbels compound, leaf-opposed or terminal. Involucral bracts usually wanting. Flowers white. Calyx-teeth obsolete. Petals ovate, concave, usually inflected at the tip. Fruit page 205ovate or broader than long, slightly compressed laterally, constricted at the commissure. Carpels ovoid, with five prominent obtuse nearly equal ribs. Vittæ 1 under each furrow and 2 on the commissural side.
A genus of about 15 species, widely dispersed in most parts of the world. In addition to the single indigenous species, two others have become naturalised in New Zealand—the wild celery (A. graveolens, Linn.), which is very closely allied to A. prostratum, differing chiefly in the erect habit and thinner ribs to the carpels; and A. leptophpllum, F. Muell, a common plant in many warm climates, and which can be recognised by the slender habit and ternately divided leaves with filiform segments.
| 1. | A. prostratum, Lab. Relat. i. 141.—Very variable in size and degree of stoutness. Root sometimes as thick as the thumb. Stems prostrate or decumbent, more rarely suberect, sometimes rooting at the base, 6–24 in. long or more, stout or slender, branched, grooved, quite glabrous. Leaves excessively variable, 2–9 in. long, pinnate or 2-pinnate, sometimes trifoliolate; leaflets sessile or petioled, 3-partite, the segments broad or narrow, coriaceous or membranous, incised or again deeply lobed. Umbels sessile or very shortly pendunculate; rays 3–15, ½–2 in, long, each bearing a secondary umbel of rather small white flowers on slender pedicels ¼ in. long. Involucral bracts wanting. Fruit broadly ovoid, 1/12–1/10 in. long; carpels with prominent almost corky ribs; vittæ not very conspicuous.—Pl Nov. Holl, i. 76, t. 103; Kirk, Students' Fl 196. A. australe, Thouars Fl. Trist. d'Acugn. 43; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 86; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 90; Benth. Fl. Austral. iii. 372. Petroseiinum prostratum, D.C. Prodr. iv. 102; A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 278; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 503.
Var. a. —Stems usually stout. Leaves pinnate; leaflets cut into numerous broad-obovate or obcuneate segments. Var. b. —Stems usually stout. Leaves pinnate; leaflets cut into numerous narrow-linear or lanceolate acute segments.—Petroseiinum prostratum, D.C. var. b, Hook. Ic. Plant, t. 305. Var. c, filiforme. — Stems slender, prostrate. Leaves usually 3-foliolate; leaflets petioled, variously lobed or cut.—A. filiforme, Hook. Ic. Plant, t. 819; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 87; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 90. Petroseiinum filiforme, A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 278; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 504. Kermadec Islands, North and South Islands, Stewart Island: Common throughout on the shores; the var. filiforme sometimes found inland as well. November–March. Also in Australia and Tasmania, AntarcticAmerica, South Africa, and Tristan d'Acunha. The extreme forms of this variable plant are very dissimilar, but are connected by numerous intermediates. |