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. |