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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

5. Schefflera, Forst

5. Schefflera, Forst.

Glabrous shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate, digitately compound; leaflets serrulate. Flowers polygamous, in small umbels arranged in a racemose manner on the branches of a spreading panicle; pedicels not articulate. Calyx-limb minutely 5-toothed. Petals 5, valvate. Stamens 5. Disc large, with undulate margins. Ovary 5–10-celled; styles the same number as the cells, connate below, free and spreading above. Fruit subglobose, 5–10-celled; exocarp fleshy; seeds 1 in each cell.

In addition to the single New Zealand species, which is endemic, there are one or two in the Fiji Islands, and several in New Caledonia.

1.S. digitata, Forst. Char. Gen. 46.—A small tree 10–25 ft. high, with stout spreading branches. Leaves on sheathing petioles 4–9 in. long, digitately 7–10-foliolate; leaflets 3–7 in., petiolate, page 233oblong- or obovate-lanceolate, acuminate, thin and membranous, finely and sharply serrate, in young plants often irregularly lobulate or pinnatifid. Panicles axillary or from the branches below the leaves, 8–12 in. long; branches numerous, long, spreading at right angles. Flowers small, greenish, ¼–⅓ in. diam., in 4–8-flowered umbels arranged in a racemose manner along the branches of the panicle; peduncles ½ in. long; pedicels in. Fruit globose, 1/10–⅛ in. diam., juicy, grooved when dry.—Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 103; Kirk, Students' Fl. 220. S. Cunninghamii, Miq. in Linnæa, xviii. (1844) 89. Aralia Schefflera, Spreng. Pl. Pugill. i. 28; A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 283; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 513; Raoul, Choix, 46; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 95, t. 22.

North and South Islands: Abundant in woods from the North. Cape to Stewart Island, ascending to nearly 3000 ft. Pate; Patete. February–March.