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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
2. Sparganium, Linn
2. Sparganium, Linn.
Marsh or aquatic herbs. Rhizome creeping. Stems erect or floating, simple or the inflorescence alone branched. Leaves crowded at the base of the stem, distichous, linear-elongate, erect or floating, sheathing at the base. Flowers monoecious, crowded in superposed usually remotely placed globose heads subtended by leafy bracts; the upper heads male, the lower female. Perianth of 3–8 spathulate membranous scales. Male flowers: Stamens 2–3, rarely more; filaments long or short, distinct or variously connate; anthers linear-oblong, 4-celled, longitudinally dehiscent. Female flowers: Ovary sessile or nearly so, 1–2-celled, produced into 1–2 long or short styles; stigma unilateral; ovule solitary, pendulous. Fruit obovoid, spongy, tipped by the per-sistent style; endocarp bony. Seed with a membranous testa; albumen farinaceous; embryo axile.
page 744A small genus, not uncommon in the north temperate zone. In the Southern Hemisphere its sole representative is the following species, which is found in both Australia and New Zealand.
| 1. | S. antipodum, Graebner in Allg. Bot. Zeitschr. iv. (1899) 33. —Sterns slender, erect, 1–2 ft. high. Leaves very long, the lower radical ones usually far surpassing the inflorescence, 1/10–⅕ in. broad, flattish above, acutely and prominently keeled beneath, tip acute, lower portion expanded into a long but rather narrow sheath. Inflorescence simple in small specimens, but usually with 1–3 slender flexuous branches bearing male heads alone or very rarely with a single female below the males; main rhachis with 2–4 distant female heads below, and 3–12 more closely placed male ones above; the lower portion of the inflorescence with long leafy bracts. Filaments of the male flowers long, considerably more than twice the length of the scales. Stigma narrow, elongate. Ripe fruit about ⅙ in. long, broadly obovoid, mucronate with the short thick persistent style.—S. angustifolium, R. Br. Prodr. 338 (not of Michx.); Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 160; Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xvi. (1884) 339. S. simplex, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 238, and Handb. N.Z. FL 277 (not of Huds.).
North Island: Watery places from the North Cape to Wellington, not uncommon. South Island: Near Picton, J. Rutland! Maru. Decem-ber-March. Also in Australia, from Queensland to Victoria. S. subglobosum, Morong in Bull. Torrey Club, xv. (1888) 76, t. 79, f. 1, said to have been collected at the Bay of Islands by the American Exploring Expedition, is probably the same, and, if so, Morong's name will take precedence. |