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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Lepyeodia, R. Br
1. Lepyeodia, R. Br.
Rhizome stout, creeping, scaly. Stems erect, simple or branched, terete. Leaves reduced to persistent or rarely deciduous sheathing scales. Flowers diœcious or monœcious, rarely hermaphrodite, in rather broad or narrow panicles, sometimes almost spicate, the inflorescence not conspicuously different in the two sexes. Glumes, lanceolate, scarcely imbricate; bracteoles 2 at the base of each flower. Male flowers: Perianth-segments 6, glume-like or thin, page 760and almost hyaline. Stamens 3; filaments distinct; anthers 1-celled. Female flowers: Perianth as in the males. Staminodia 3, some-times with abortive anthers. Ovary 3-angled, 3-celled; styles 3, free or connate at the base; ovules 1 in each cell. Capsule triquetrous, dehiscing at the angles.
A small genus of 15 species, all confined to Australia except the following one.
| 1. | L. Traversii, F. Muell. Fragm. viii. 79. —Rhizome stout. creeping, clothed with pale-chestnut scales; roots long, stringy. Stems stout, terete, polished, simple below, fastigiately branched above, 2–5 ft. high. Sheaths distant, closely appressed, acuminate, ¾–1 in. long. Inflorescence a rather narrow closely branched red-brown terminal panicle 2–5 in. long; branches erect, unequal; bracts under the branches rigid, lanceolate, acuminate. Flowers sessile or shortly pedicelled within lanceolate glumes rather longer than the perianth; 2 scarious bracteoles at the base of each flower. Perianth-segments in both sexes red-brown, lanceolate, acute; male flowers with a small rudimentary ovary, females with 3 slender staminodia. Anthers linear-oblong, minutely apiculate. Ripe fruit 1-celled, 1-seeded, obliquely ovoid, triquetrous with the angles thickened, tipped with the remains of the style, at length dehiscent along the angles.—Calorophus sp., Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 267. Sporadanthus Traversii, F. Muell. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. vii. (1875) 389; Kirk, ibid. x. App. 41.
North Island: Auckland—Swamps between Hamilton and Ohaupo, Middle Waikato district, T. F. C. Chatham Islands: Abundant in peaty swamps, Dieffenbach, H. H. Traners! Cockayne! A very curious species. It differs from Lepyrodia in the 1-celled and 1-seeded fruit, and was consequently erected into a separate genus (Spora-danthus) by F. Mueller. In its other characters and in habit, however, it is altogether a Lepyrodia, and it appears best to consider it a species of that genus with the ovary 1-celled by abortion. I have not seen female flowers except old ones persistent with the fruit, and cannot say whether the ovary is 3-celled at an early stage, as seems probable. |