Australina. | URTICACES, 639 
1. A. pusilla, Gaud. im Freyc. Voy. Bot. 505.—Stems very 
slender, creeping and rooting, much and often intricately 
branched, 3-12 in. long, more or less pubescent. Leaves 4-4 in. 
long, broadly ovate or orbicular or broader than long, rounded 
at the tip, cuneate or almost truncate at the base, obtusely cre- 
nate, thin and membranous, pubescent on both surfaces; petiole 
as long or longer than the blade. Male flowers 2-3 together or 
solitary; peduncle variable in length, sometimes exceeding the 
petiole. Perianth irregularly bilabiate, green, membranous, hispid. 
Stamen large, exserted. Female flowers solitary or 2-3 together, 
each on a very short peduncle or sessile, in the same or in a 
different axil to the male inflorescence. Perianth very minute, 
flask-shaped, 2-3-toothed at the constricted mouth. Style exserted, 
villous.—Handb. N.Z. Fl. 252; Benth. Fl. Austral. vi. 189. A. 
nove-zealandiw, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 226. A. hispidula, Col. 
in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xviii. (1886) 266. 
Norte AND SoutH Is~tanps: Dark shaded woods from Hokianga and the 
Bay of Islands to Foveaux Strait, but often very local. Sea-level to 1000 ft. 
Orper LXXVII. CUPULIFERA. 
Trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate, penninerved, entire or 
toothed or lobed, never compound; stipules present, free, often 
caducous. Flowers usually monecious. Males in erect or pen- 
‘dulous spikes (catkins) sometimes shortened into globular or capi- 
tate clusters. Perianth of 1-5 free or connate segments or want- 
ing. Stamens 2-20, inserted on a torus or at the base of the 
perianth-segments ; filaments slender; anthers 2-celled. Female 
flowers less numerous than the males, solitary or in few-flowered 
‘catkins or clusters, often surrounded by scales or bracts which are 
frequently united into an entire or lobed involucre. Perianth 
adnate to the ovary or wanting, limb minute, annular or toothed. 
Ovary inferior, 2-6-celled ; styles as many as the cells, stigmatic in 
the upper part; ovules 1 or % in each cell, pendulous, anatropous. 
Fruit a nut, enclosed or seated within the persistent and hardened 
enlarged involucre. Seed usually solitary in each nut; albumen 
wanting ; embryo with large and fleshy cotyledons, radicle supe- 
rior. 
An important order, including 10 genera and about 400 species, for the 
most part confined to the Northern Hemisphere, and most abundant in the 
temperate zone, extending southwards to the mountains of the Malay Archi- 
pelago and Central America and Colombia, a very few species of one genus 
alone found in the south temperate zone. The order includes the oak, chest- 
‘nut, beech, hazel, hornbeam, birch, &c., and produces some of the most durable 
and valuable woods known. The single New Zealand genus occurs in the 
temperate regions of both hemispheres, 
