HANDBOOK 
or THE 
NEW ZEALAND FLOKA. 
Class I. DICOTYLEDONS. 
Order I. RANUNCULACE-ffi. 
Herbs, with alternate or radical leaves ( Clematis excepted). Flowers usually 
hermaphrodite. — Sepals 3-6, free, often petaloid, usually deciduous. Petals 
5-10 or 0, sometimes spurred or deformed, often with a pit or scale towards 
the base, deciduous. Stamens hypogynous, usually very numerous ; anthers ad- 
nate. Carpels numerous, free, on a torus which sometimes elongates. Fruit 
of few or many 1-seeded achenes, or many-seeded follicles. Seeds with copious 
fleshy albumen, and a minute embryo. 
An Order abounding in all temperate climates, rarer in tropical. Many European and 
other genera have irregular flowers, and otherwise deviate from the New Zealand types ; 
such are the cultivated Aconite, Larkspur, Columbine, etc. All the New Zealand genera 
are British. 
Climbing shrubs with opposite compound leaves 1. Clematis. 
Herb. Leaves radical, linear. Sepals 5. Petals 0 2. Myosurus. 
Herbs. Sepals 5. Petals 5-20. Carpels 1-ovuled 3. Ranunculus. 
Herb. Leaves radical, sagittate. Sepals petaloid. Petals 0. Carpels 
many-ovuled 4. Caltha. 
1. CLEMATIS, Linn. 
Much branched, slender, climbing shrubs, with opposite compound leaves, 
and panicles of white or cream-coloured polygamous flowers. — Sepals 4-8, 
petaloid, valvate. Stamens 6 or more. Carpels many, 1-ovuled. Achenes 
indehiscent, the styles elongated into long feathered awns. 
A large and widely diffused genus, of which some foreign species have blue or purple 
flowers, or herbaceous or erect stems, or entire leaves, or minute petals. The New Zealand 
species are very variable, passing one into the other; their flowers are almost unisexual, 
the males having no carpels, and the females few stamens. The anthers have no appendage 
at the tip as most Australian species have, C. parviflora alone having a very minute one. 
VOL. I. E 
