style very shore, thick; stigma capitate. Fruit large, thick and spongy, pyramidal, 4-angled, composed of 4 coriaceous winged nutlets adhering to a central column.
A very remarkable monotypic genus confined to the Clatham Islands.
1. M. nobile, Hook. Bot. Mag. t. 5137.—Perennial, stout, pilose; rootstock long, thick, cylindrical. Eadical leaves crowded, 6–12 in. long, broadly ovate-cordate or reniform, petioled, very thick and fleshy, bright-green and glabrous, strongly nerved; cauline few, broadly ovate or oblong, sessile. Cymes dense, subglobose, 3–6 in. diam., many-flowered. Flowers ½ in. diam., dark-blue in the centre, fading towards the outside, scentless; pedicels ¼–½ in. long. Calyx-lobes broadly oblong, obtuse, more or less hispid with short appressed hairs. Corolla rotate; tube short; limb spreading, lobes rounded. Fruit ½–¾ in. diam.—Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 196; F. Muell. Veg. Chath. Is. 32; Buch. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. vii. (1875) t. 12.
Chatham Islands: Sandy soil near the sea, Travers! Enys! Chatham Islands Lily.
A noble plant, once very abundant on the coast-line of the Chatham Islands, but now fast becoming rare in a wild state.
3. TETRACHONDRA, Petrie.
A small creeping densely matted perennial herb, glabrous or nearly so. Leaves small, all opposite, elliptic-oblong, obtuse, quite entire; petioles broad, connate at the base. Flowers terminating short axillary branchlets, minute, solitary, tetramerous. Calyx persistent, deeply 4-fid; segments ovate, obtuse. Corolla slightly longer than the calyx, subrotate; tube very short, naked; limb with 4 ovate lobes imbricate in the bud. Stamens 4, inserted at the base of the sinus between the corolla-lobes; filaments as long or rather longer than the anthers; anthers 2-celled, small, rounded, dorsifixed. Ovary 4-partite to the base; style erect from between the lobes, twice as long as the ovary; stigma small. Nutlets 4, attached by a small base, rounded at the back and top, setulose, longer than the persistent calyx and style. Seed erect, albuminous; embryo cylindrical, almost as long as the albumen; cotyledons equalling the radicle.
1. T. Hamiltonii, Petrie in Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 2250.—Forming densely matted patches several inches in diameter. Leaves 112–110 in. long, rather fleshy, obscurely dotted. Flowers minute, 112 in. diam.— Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxv. (1893) 269. Tillaea Hamiltonii, Kirk ex W. S. Hamilton in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xvii. (1885) 292.
South Island: Otago—Lowlands in the south and east. Between the Lee Stream and Taieri; Hindon; Waipahi; Invercargill, Petrie! Makarewa River, W. S. Hamilton! Sea-level to 1800 ft.
