ascending; placentas axile. Fruit various, generally a 2–4-celled capsule with loculicidal or septicidal dehiscence, sometimes a berry, rarely nut-like. Seeds usually small, sometimes provided with a tuft of hairs; albumen none, or a thin layer only.
A small order of about 11 genera and 300 species, widely spread in temperate regions, rare in the tropics; most plentiful in North America, especially in Mexico. Many of the species have handsome flowers, and are frequently cultivated in gardens, particularly the genera Godetia, Œnothera, Clarkia, and Fuchsia, but they have no other economical importance. Of the New Zealand genera, Epilobium is universal in cool climates; Fuchsia is confined to South America with the exception of the New Zealand species.
| Herbs. Fruit an elongated capsule. Seeds with a tuft of hairs | 1. Epilobium. |
| Shrubs or small trees. Fruit a berry | 2. Fuchsia. |
1. EPILOBIUM, Linn.
Herbs; stems erect or decumbent or creeping, sometimes hard and almost woody at the base. Leaves alternate or opposite, entire or toothed. Flowers rose-coloured or purple or white, solitary in the upper axils or forming a terminal raceme or spike. Calyx-tube scarcely produced beyond the ovary, linear, 4-angled or nearly terete; limb 4-partite, deciduous. Petals 4, obovate or obcordate, spreading or erect. Stamens 8, the 4 alternate ones shorter. Ovary inferior, 4-celled; style filiform; stigma clavate or with 4 spreading or erect lobes; ovules numerous, 2-seriate, ascending. Capsule elongate, 4-angled, 4-celled and 4-valved, the valves separating and curving back from a central seed-bearing axis. Seeds numerous, broadest above, the summit furnished with a tuft of long hairs.
A large genus in the temperate and cold regions of both hemispheres; rare in the tropics, except on high mountains; more abundant in New Zealand than in any other part of the world. Species variously estimated by authors, from 60 to nearly 200.
The species of Epilobium are well known to be highly variable in any country that they inhabit, but in New Zealand the amount of variation is inordinately great, making it difficult to affix limits to many of the species, which appear to merge gradually into one another. In the arrangement of the New Zealand forms I have for the most part followed Professor Haussknecht's elaborate and beautifully illustrated monograph, but I have been unable to accept the whole of the species he has proposed, several of them appearing to me to rest on characters much too trivial or inconstant. The beginner will find it most difficult to identify any of the species with certainty, and his only safe course is to collect copious suites of specimens and to defer all attempts to name them until he has gained a clear idea of the prevalent forms and their characters.
| A. Similes. Stems tall, erect, herbaceous, slightly woody at the base. Flowers numerous, towards the ends of the branches. | |
| * Leaves sessile or nearly so. | |
| Tall, often 3 ft. high. Leaves lanceolate or linear-lanceolate. Flowers numerous, large, ½–¾ in. diam., white | 1. E. pallidiflorum. |
| Slender, 1–2 ft. Leaves distant, ovate-oblong. Flowers few, large, ⅓–½ in., white | 2. E. chionanthum. |
