anthers adnate, 2-celled, longitudinally dehiscent. Disc flat, thick, sinuately 4–6-lobed. Ovary superior, fleshy, conic; stigma small, sessile, entire or obscurely lobed. Fruit a nut or drupe seated on the enlarged and often succulent and coloured pedicel. Seed erect; testa thin; albumen copious; embryo minute, cylindric.
Species 16, 9 of which are found in Australia, one of them extending to the Malay Archipelago. The remaining 7 are found in Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands, and Madagascar.
1. E. Bidwillii, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 223, t. 52.—A small much-branched rigid procumbent shrub 6–24 in. high; branches ascending, short, stiff, terete, deeply furrowed. Leaves reduced to minute triangular scales, alternate, persistent. Flowers minute, arranged in short and stout 4–10-flowered spikes springing from the axils of the scale-like leaves; rhachis pubescent, excavated at the insertion of each flower; bract minute. Perianth-segments usually 5, but sometimes 4 or 6. Stamens the same number; filaments short. Nut oblong, black, about ⅕ in. long, peduncle much enlarged and thickened, often red and succulent, the perianth-segments persistent under the fruit.—Handb. N.Z. Fl. 246.
South Island: Not uncommon in the mountains of Nelson, Marlborough, Canterbury, and northern Otago. 1000–4000 ft. December–February.
Order LXXIV. BALANOPHOREÆ.
Low-growing fleshy leafless or scaly root-parasites. Stem reduced to a tuberous globular or misshapen often lobed rhizome. Peduncles short or long, thick, naked or clothed with scattered or imbricate scales. Flowers monœcious or diœcious, minute, crowded in spadix-like heads at the top of the peduncles. Male flowers: Perianth wanting or of 3–6 valvate lobes. Stamens 1–3, rarely more; filaments free or connate into a tube or column; anthers 2-many-celled. Female flowers: Perianth wanting or adnate to the ovary; limb absent or minutely toothed. Ovary ovoid or globose, 1–3-celled; styles 1–2, long or short or almost absent; stigmas simple or capitellate, sometimes sessile and discoid; ovules solitary in each cell, pendulous, anatropous. Fruit a minute crustaceous or coriaceous 1-seeded utricle or nut. Seed adherent to the pericarp, albuminous; embryo most minute.
A small but very remarkable order of fleshy root-parasites, chiefly tropical in its distribution, but nowhere plentiful. Genera, 14; species, 35.
1. DACTYLANTHUS, Hook. f.
A root-parasite. Rhizome usually subterranean, perennial, hard and woody, rounded or amorphous, often irregularly lobed, surface rough with small tubercles or warts. Flowering-stems or peduncles annual, numerous, crowded, clavate, clothed throughout with im-
