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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

[Introduction to Order LXI. NyctagineÆ.]

Herbs or shrubs or trees. Leaves opposite or less frequently alternate, simple, entire, exstipulate. Flowers hermaphrodite or unisexual, often involucrate, usually arranged in cymose panicles. Perianth inferior, petaloid, monophyllous; tube persistent and enveloping the fruit; limb with 3–5-plicate lobes. Stamens variable in number (1–30), usually 6–10, hypogynous; filaments often unequal, inflexed in bud; anthers didymous. Ovary superior, 1-celled; style simple, terminal; stigma small, entire or multifid; page 574ovule solitary, basilar, erect. Fruit a utricle with a membranous pericarp, firmly enclosed in the thickened or hardened base of the perianth-tube, which falls off with it. Seed erect, with a thin adherent testa; albumen farinaceous or fleshy; embryo with foliaceous cotyledons usually wrapped round the albumen, radicle inferior.

A small order, of no economical importance, with the exception of 2 or 3 wide-ranging genera almost wholly confined to tropical America. Genera 23; species about 200. The single New Zealand genus is distributed over the shores of most tropical countries.