Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/39

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Campbell's Islands.]
FLORA ANTARCTICA.
17

vittæ extend through their whole length. The seed hangs loose in the cell, is small, and covered with a rather thick blackish testa; its sides have furrows corresponding to the valleculæ.

Plate VIII. A small flowering portion of the plant, with the limb of the leaf; Fig. 1, unexpanded male flower; fig. 2, the same expanded; fig. 3, calyx and stylopodia:—the dissections magnified.

Plate IX. & X. B. Fig. 1, partial umbel of ripe fruit of natural size; fig. 2, a single fruit removed from the umbel; fig. 3, transverse section of the same, showing the inequality of the mericarps, one of which is empty with five ridges, the other fertile with four ridges:—all the dissections magnified.

2. Anisotome antipoda; foliis lineari-oblongis tripinnatisectis segmentis teretibus divaricatis lineari-subulatis rigidis pungentibus striatis intus præsertim ad furcaturas transversim articulatis, rachibus superne canaliculars. (Tab. IX. & X.)—Ligusticum antipodum, Hombr. et Jacq. Voy. au Pol Sud, Bot. Phaner. tab. 3. sine descript.

Hab. Lord Auckland's group and Campbell's Island; in moist places especially near the sea, and in the former islands ascending to the mountain tops in a more stunted form.

A scarcely less handsome plant than the former, with which it agrees entirely in habit, and more particularly in the structure of the male flowers. The umbels are however less densely crowded, borne on longer peduncles, and produce fewer partial umbels and flowers. I was unfortunate in not being able to detect female flowers, nor have I seen any nearer approach to that state of the plant than the occasional presence, amongst the flowers of the ray, of stylopodia and styles analogous to those of the female of the former species. The fruit of this plant is represented in the 'Botany' of the French Voyage of Discovery quoted above, but in it the mericarps are figured as equal, and the vittæ are probably accidentally omitted; so very singular a character as the former may have been overlooked in the dry state of the plant; the glands, which are very obscure in the former species, are in this very large and apparently confined to one side of each mericarp: a remarkable similarity, however, exists in the furrowed seeds and in the stylopodia of the two species. The lamellæ in the fistular portion of the stem are not represented, and the sketch of the entire plant bears but a slight resemblance to the state in which we drew it.

In structure, the fructification of this genus is more closely allied to Aciphylla, Forst., than its general appearance would lead one to suppose. The figure of that plant (in the Icones Plant.) was taken from a specimen in fruit, the only state in which we possessed it previous to the arrival of Mr. Stephenson's New Zealand collection (vide Lond. Journ. of Bot. for September 1844), which contains small portions of apparently this plant (n. 81) in flower. In it the partial umbels are few-flowered, with the peduncles divaricating; they are borne on axillary branches, subtended by a sheathing, lanceolate, acuminated, pungent involucral leaf; towards the apex of the stem these branches are more crowded, and the involucral leaves are lengthened and become bifid or even trifid. The calycine segments are very small, broad, obtuse, and nearly equal in size. The petals (apparently pale yellow), though more incurved than in Anisotome, are scarcely furnished with an "inflexed lacinula"; the stamens, stylopodia and styles are very similar in the two genera. The female flowers are probably more densely aggregated than the male, and in the inflorescence of the former the involucral leaves may rapidly assume the curious form represented in the 'Icones,' or Mr. Stephenson's specimens may belong to a different species, for certainly their mode of inflorescence bears little resemblance to the dense cylindrical female spike of the A. squarrosa. Both these genera will naturally rank near Ligusticum, from which they are however very distinct, and may be considered as forming a small natural group. What I am inclined to consider as a third species of Anisotome is the Ligusticum anisatum, Banks and Sol. MSS. in Mus. Brit.; a plant discovered by Sir J. Banks and Dr. Solander in Queen Charlotte's Sound, and a fourth has been since gathered in Cook's Straits by Dr. Dieffenbach, and on the high mountain of Tongariro by Mr. Bidwill; both these gentlemen's specimens are male. The An-