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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
3. Ruppia, Linn
3. Ruppia, Linn.
Slender submerged much-branched herbs, usually growing in brackish water. Leaves alternate or opposite, filiform, with broad sheathing bases. Flowers minute, hermaphrodite, 2 or more on a spike, at first enclosed in the membranous leaf-sheath, but after flowering the filiform peduncle elongates greatly, and is either straight or spirally coiled. Perianth wanting. Stamens 2, opposite; filaments very short; anthers 2-celled, the cells distinct, opening outwards. Carpels 4; stigma sessile, peltate; ovule solitary, pendulous from the apex of the cell. Fruiting carpels stipitate, obliquely ovoid, obtuse or beaked. Seed uncinate; testa, membranous; embryo with a large thick radicle and small incurved cotyledon.
A genus of either one variable species or of several closely allied ones, common in brackish waters in almost all temperate or subtropical countries.
| 1. | R. maritima, Linn. Sp. Plant. 127.—Stems slender, filiform, variable in length, 6–24 in., leafy throughout. Leaves 2–5 in. long, filiform, with broad membranous sheathing bases. Flowers 2–6 together, at first completely enclosed in the inflated leaf-sheath;. but the spike gradually emerges, and is borne up to the surface of the water by the usually conspicuously spirally coiled peduncle. Ripe carpels 1/10–⅙ in. long, greenish, obliquely ovoid, beaked; each one on a slender stipes sometimes more than l in. long.—Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 236; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 279; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 174.
North and South Islands: Abundant throughout in brackish-water ponds and lagoons, not so common in fresh-water lakes and streams. December–April. All the specimens I have seen have spirally coiled peduncles and rather broad sheaths; but in all probability the variety (or species) rostellata will also-be found, which has straight or flexuous peduncles and narrow leaf-sheaths. |