Carpels numerous; styles long, silky. Fruiting-perianth much enlarged and elongated, often quite 1 in. long, narrow-urceolate, splitting irregularly into 3–5 valves. Achenes 6–12, narrowed into long plumose styles.—Raoul, Choix, 42; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 218; Kirk, Forest Fl. t. 71. Atherosperma novæ-zealandiæ, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 240.
North Island: Abundant in swampy forests. South Island: Various localities in Marlborough, Nelson, and Westland, rare and local. Sea-level to 2000 ft. Pukatea. October–November.
The wood is pale-brown, often prettily clouded with darker brown. It is strong and tough, and does not readily split, so that it is occasionally used for boat-building, and more rarely for cabinetwork. The leaver and young branches are aromatic when bruised.
Order LXIX. LAURINEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, often aromatic. (Cassytha is a leafless parasitic climber.) Leaves alternate, rarely opposite, usually simple and entire, often gland-dotted; stipules wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite or unisexual, generally small, usually in axillary cymes or panicles or clusters. Perianth inferior, herbaceous or coloured, deeply cut into 4–8 (usually 6) imbricate segments. Stamens usually twice the number of the perianth-segments, inserted in 2–3 series on the perianth-tube, all fertile or some reduced to stammodia; filaments flattened, naked or provided with 2 glands at the base; anther-cells 2–4, opening by upturned valves. Ovary free, 1-celled; style simple, terminal; stigma capitate, entire or lobed; ovuie solitary, pendulous, anatropous. Fruit a drupe or berry, rarely dry, free or enclosed in the perianth. Seed solitary, pendulous; albumen wanting; embryo with large plano-convex cotyledons, radicle minute, superior.
An important order, having its headquarters in tropical America and Asia, less common in tropical Africa or in Australia and the Pacific islands, while few species penetrate into either the north or south temperate zones. Genera 35; species approaching 900. The order includes many useful plants, the chief of which are the camphor laurel, cinnamon, alligator pear, sassafras, &c. The timber of not a few species is highly valued on account of its toughness and fine and solid grain The three New Zealand genera are all widely diffused in tropical regions.
| Trees. Flowers hermaphrodite, panicled. Three inner anthers extrorse | 1. Beilschmiedia. |
| Trees. Flowers diœcious, umbellate; umbels involucrate. Anthers all introrse | 2. Litsæa. |
| Leafless parasitic twining herbs | 3. Cassytha. |
1. BEILSCHMIEDIA, Nees.
Trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate or opposite, penninerved. Flowers small, hermaphrodite, panicled or fascicled. Perianth-tube short; limb with 6 subequal segments. Perfect stamens 9 in 3
