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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

2. Exocarpus, Labill

2. Exocarpus, Labill.

Shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate or rarely opposite, often reduced to minute scales. Flowers minute, hermaphrodite or unisexual by abortion, in small axillary spikes or fascicles, each flower sessile or nearly so in a notch of the rhachis or axillary to a minute scale-like bract. Perianth inferior, divided to the base into 4–6 valvate segments. Stamens the same number as the perianth-segments and inserted near their base; filaments very short and broad; page 625anthers adnate, 2-celled, longitudinally dehiscent. Disc flat, thick, sinuately 4–6-lobed. Ovary superior, fleshy, conic; stigma small, sessile, entire or obscurely lobed. Fruit a nut or drupe seated on the enlarged and often succulent and coloured pedicel. Seed erect; testa thin; albumen copious; embryo minute, cylindric.

Species 16, 9 of which are found in Australia, one of them extending to the Malay Archipelago. The remaining 7 are found in Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands, and Madagascar.

  • 1. E. Bidwillii, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 223, t. 52.—A small much-branched rigid procumbent shrub 6–24 in, high; branches ascending, short, stiff, terete, deeply furrowed. Leaves reduced to minute triangular scales, alternate, persistent. Flowers minute, arranged in short and stout 4–10-flowered spikes springing from the axils of the scale-like leaves; rhachis pubescent, excavated at the insertion of each flower; bract minute. Perianth-segments usually 5, but sometimes 4 or 6. Stamens the same number; filaments short. Nut oblong, black, about ⅕ in. long, peduncle much enlarged and thickened, often red and succulent, the perianth-segments persistent under the fruit.—Handb. N.Z. FL 246.

    South Island: Not uncommon in the mountains of Nelson, Marlborough, Canterbury, and northern Obago. 1000–4000 ft. December–February.