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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Selliera, Cav
1. Selliera, Cav.
Small glabrous creeping and rooting perennial herbs. Leaves alternate or fascicled at the nodes, entire. Flowers axillary, sessile or pedunculate. Calyx-tube adnate to the ovary; limb 5-lobed or -partite. Corolla oblique, split to the base at the back; limb of 5 nearly equal lobes, at length digitately spreading; the margins inflexed or winged. Stamens 5, epigynous; anthers free. Ovary inferior, more or less completely 2-celled; ovules numerous in each cell. Style undivided; stigma short, truncate, enclosed within the cup-shaped indusium. Fruit fleshy, indehiscent. Seeds usually numerous, compressed or irregularly shaped.
A small genus of two species, one of which is confined to Western Australia; the other occurs in Australia, Tasmania, and Chili, as well as in New Zealand.
| 1. | S. radicans, Cav. Ic. v. 49, t. 474.—A glabrous creeping and rooting perennial; stems 1–10 in. long, usually matted and interlaced, forming broad flat patches. Leaves variable in size, ½–4 in. long, linear-spathulate to oblong-spathulate or obovate-spathulate, obtuse, narrowed into a long petiole, quite entire, nerveless, very thick and fleshy. Peduncles axillary, 1- or rarely 2-flowered, shorter than the leaves, with 2 subulate bracts above the middle. Flowers white, ⅓ in. long. Calyx - lobes lanceolate or linear. Corolla-lobes ovate, acute, not winged. Fruit fleshy, ovoid or obovoid, about ¼ in. long. Seeds compressed, orbicular, narrowly page 395winged.—Handb. N.Z. Fl. 173; Fl. Tasm. i. 231; Benth. Fl. Austral. iv. 82. S. fasciculata, Buch, in Trans. N.Z. Inst. iii. (1871) 211. S. microphylla, Col. l.c. xxii. (1890) 473. Goodenia repens, Labill. PI. Nov. Holl. i. 53, t. 76: A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 228; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 428; Raoul, Choix, 45; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 156.
North and South Islands, Stewart Island: Common in muddy or sandy or rocky places near the sea. Inland by the margins of the larger lakes, &c, ascending to over 2500 ft. at the base of Ruapehu. November–February. For notes on the fertilisation, see a paper by myself in the Trans. N.Z. Inst. ix. p. 542. |