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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Typha, Linn
1. Typha, Linn.
Tall reed-like marsh or aquatic herbs. Leaves all radical, long, linear, erect, spongy. Flowers monoecious, densely crowded in a terminal cylindrical spike furnished with a few deciduous spatha-ceous bracts; spikes either continuous or separated into two dis-tinct parts by a broad or narrow interval, the upper portion male, the lower female. Male flowers of 1–7 stamens intermixed with capillary membranous scales; filaments short or long, distinct or connate; anthers linear-oblong, basifixed, 4-celled, longitudinally dehiscent; connective produced at the tip. Female flowers with or without a linear-spathulate bracteole at the base. Ovary long-stalked, the stalk furnished with numerous silky hairs, 1-celled,. narrowed into a slender style; stigma unilateral, linguiform or spathulate; ovule solitary, pendulous. Fruit very minute, fusiform or narrow-ovoid; pericarp membranous or coriaceous, at length laterally dehiscent. Seed the same shape as the pericarp; albumen farinaceous; embryo axile.
page 743Species 9 or 10, spread over most temperate and tropical regions.
| 1. | T. angustifolia, Linn. Sp. Plant. 971. — Very variable in stature, 3–8 ft. high or more. Leaves as long as the flowering-stems or sometimes exceeding them, rather narrow, ⅕–½ in. broad, rarely more, expanded at the base into a broad sheath often more than a foot in length, plano-convex or convex on both sides. Spike variable in length; male portion usually from 2 to 6 in. long, in some varieties contiguous to the female part, in others separated from it by an interval sometimes as much as 1 in. long, axis of the spike furnished with reddish-brown hairs mixed with the flowers; female portion 3–8 in. long, ⅓–¾ in. broad. Female flowers fur-nished at the base with a linear spathulate bracteole, the hairs on the pedicel of the ovary shorter than the stigma.—A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 99; A. Cunn. Precitr. n. 319; Raoul, Choix, 41; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 238; Hanclb. N.Z. Fl. 276. T. latifolia, Forst. f. Prodr. n. 336 (not of Linn.); Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl 772.
Kermadbc Islands, North and South Islands: Abundant in marshy places throughout. Sea-level to 2000 ft. Bulrush; Raupo. December–March. Almost cosmopolitan. The Australian and New Zealand forms are placed by Graebner (Das Pnanzenreich, Heft 2) under var. Brownii (T. Brownii, Kunth) and var. Muelleri (T. Muelleri, Rohrb.). The first of these includes the larger and coarser states, with much of the habit of T. latifolia, and, like it, with the male and female spikes contiguous. It differs, however, from T. latifolia in the female flowers being bracteolate at the base. Var. Muelleri is smaller, and usually has the male and female spikes separated by a distinct interval. The pollen was formerly collected by the Maoris, made into cakes with water, and then baked and eaten; the starchy rhizome was also used for food in times of scarcity. The leaves were employed for constructing the walls of their houses, or whares, and are still used for the same purpose. |