Order XLV. MYRSINEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, usually glabrous. Leaves alternate, undivided, generally provided with pellucid glandular dots; stipules wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite or polygamous. Calyx usually inferior, 4–6-lobed or -partite, segments often ciliate. Corolla gamopetalous (rarely polypetalous), segments (or petals) 4–6, contorted or imbricated. Stamens opposite to the corolla-lobes and equal to them in number, free or adnate to the tube. Anthers oblong, 2-celled, sometimes coherent. Ovary usually superior, 1-celled; style single, stigma generally capitate; ovules few or many, inserted on a free central placenta. Fruit a one- to several-seeded drupe or berry. Seeds roundish or angular; albumen copious, sometimes pitted or ruminate; embryo usually transverse.
An order of considerable size (according to the most recent enumeration including over 30 genera and 900 species), widely spread over the warm regions of the globe, rare or absent in temperate climates, except in New Zealand. Economic properties unimportant. The single genus found in New Zealand has a wide range in the tropics of both hemispheres.
1. MYRSINE, Linn.
Small trees or shrubs. Leaves coriaceous, entire or rarely toothed. Flowers small, polygamous or often aioecious, in sessile or stalked axillary fascicles or umbels or sometimes solitary; usually springing from the nodes on the old wood below the leaves. Calyx small, 4–5-fid, persistent. Corolla 4–5-partite or of 4–5 distinct petals; segments imbricate or rarely valvate, spreading or recurved. Stamens 4–5, inserted near the base of the corolla, filaments short. Ovary superior, 1-celled; style short or altogether absent; stigma capitate or lobed or fringed; ovules few, sunk in a fleshy placenta. Fruit small, globose, drupaceous, dry or fleshy. Seed solitary, usually surrounded by the remains of the placenta; albumen horny; embryo elongated, often curved.
Taken in the sense of the "Genera Plantarum" this is a genus of from 120 to 150 species, most of them natives of tropical Asia, Africa, and America; with comparatively few species in extra-tropical Asia and Africa, in Australia, New Zealand, and Polynesia; the 8 species found in New Zealand being all endemic. In Carl Mez's recent monograph of the order, published in "Das Pflanzenreich," the New Zealand forms are referred to the genera Suttonia and Rapanea, the first comprising those with absolutely free petals, the second those in which the corolla is more or less gamopetalous. But in the three species which Mez places in Rapanea one has the petals absolutely free, and in the two others they only cohere very slightly at the base. Without expressing any opinion as to how far it may be advisable to dismember the original genus Myrsine, I certainly think that the New Zealand species form a natural group, and are best kept together. If it is necessary to separate them from Myrsine, the characters of Suttonia should be enlarged so as to take in the whole of them.
