458 BORAGINACEH. [Myosotis. 
1. MYOSOTIS, Linn. 
Annual or perennial herbs, usually more or less hispid. Leaves 
alternate, entire, radical petioled, cauline sessile. Flowers small, 
blue or white or yellow, in scorpioid simple or branched racemes 
destitute of bracts, or in the axils of the upper leaves, rarely 
solitary and terminal. Calyx 5-lobed or -partite; lobes narrow. 
hardly altered in fruit. Corolla with a cylindrical tube partly 
closed with 5 small scales in the throat; limb spreading, 5-lobed ; 
lobes contorted in the bud. Stamens 34, affixed to the corolla-tube, 
included or exserted; anthers ovate or oblong. Ovary deeply 
4-lobed ; style filiform. Nutlets 4, ovoid-oblong, smooth and shin- 
ing, attached by a small basal area. 
A well-known genus of nearly 50 species, plentiful in the temperate regions 
of the Northern Hemisphere and in New Zealand, rare elsewhere. One of the 
New Zealand species extends to Australia, the rest are endemic. 
I have followed the ‘‘ Genera Plantarum’’ and Engler and Prantl’s Pflan- 
zenfamilien in reducing Hxarrhena to a section of Myosotis. Its distinguishing 
characters lie in the usually large campanulate corolla, the stamens inserted 
high up the corolla-tube between the scales, so that the anthers are altogether 
above the level of the scales and exserted beyond the tube, and in the filaments 
being usually (but not invariably) longer than the anthers. But M. albo-sericea 
and M. Goyeni have the corolla of Hxarrhena with the stamens of Myosotis, and 
a variety of WM. capitata has the anthers exserted beyond the tube; while the 
position of the stamens on the corolla-tube varies in both Myosotis and Hxar- 
rhena. 
The student must bear in mind that several species greatly resemble one 
another in habit and foliage, although widely different in the flowers. This is 
specially the case with M. Forsteri, a true Myosotis, and M. petiolata, an un- 
doubted Exarrhena. M. capitata, M. explanata, M. concinna, and M. mac- 
rantha are all very near to one another in size, habit, and foliage, and all have 
unlike flowers. 
Section I.(Eumyosotis). Stamens inserted on the corolla-tube ; filaments shorter 
than the anthers, which are included in the tube, their tips not exceeding 
the corolla-scales. 
* Flowers solitary, sessile, terminal. Leaves small, imbricate. 
Small, densely tufted, 2-6in. diam. Leaves +in., linear- 
oblong : 1. M. uniflora. . 
Small, densely tufted, 2-4in, diam. Leaves hota in., 
obovate- spathulate .. : oe : 2. M. pulvinaris. 
** Flowers solitary and axillary. 
Small, densely tufted, 1-3in. diam. Leaves crowded. 
Flowers few, large, 4in. long, corolla-tube twice as long 
as the calyx - 38. M. Cheesemanit. 
Prostrate or decumbent, leafy, 1-6 in. long. Leaves often 
distichous. Flowers minute, zt in. long . 4, M. antarctica. 
Prostrate or decumbent, leafy, 1-2in. long. Flowers 
rather large, +-4in. long. Anthers very long narrow- 
linear Be Bc ae ‘ie : .. 5. M. decora. 
- 
