Galium.'] 
XXXVIII. RliBIACE^. 
121 
the edges and midrib below. Peduncles 1-3-flowered, spreading, longer or 
shorter than the leaves, decurved in fruit. Flowers white, T ‘ ¥ in. diam. Fruit 
of 2 minute, globose, glabrous carpels. 
Northern and Middle Islands: abundant in grassy situations, ascending to 4000 ft., 
Ban/cs and Solander, etc. 
2. G. umhrosum, Forst. — G. propinqtium, A. Cunn. ; — FI. N. Z. i. 113. 
Very variable, annual, usually erect and rather stiff, but often weak and strag- 
gling, 1-10 in. long, glabrous or ciliated on the stem and leaves. Leaves in 
whorls of 4, -Jg— §• ' n - long, broadly oblong, acuminate or awned, marked with 
pellucid dots when seen between the eye and light. Peduncles 1-3-flowered, 
longer or shorter than the leaves. Flowers very minute, white. Fruit of 2 
globose, smooth, minute carpels. 
Abundant throughout the islands, Banks and Solander, etc. I suspect that the Tasma- 
nian G. citiare, nob., does not differ from this. 
4. ASFERULA, Linn. 
Characters of Galium, but corolla more or less bell- or funnel-shaped. 
A less frequent genus than Galium, but very large and with about the same distribution. 
1. A. perp-usilla, IIooJc. f. FI. N. Z. i. 114. A small, slender, de- 
cumbent, inconspicuous annual, everywhere perfectly glabrous. Stems very 
short, 1-2 in., Aliform, branched. Leaves 4 in a whorl, tV - tV in. long, 
lanceolate, acuminate, awned, often curving to one side. Flowers solitary, 
sessile, white. Calyx-tube glabrous. Corolla funnel-shaped, in. diam., 
4-partite ; lobes linear. Styles united, their tips free, divergent. 
Northern and Middle Islands: not uncommon in dry and sandy places; base of 
Tongariro and of the Tararua range, Colenso ; upper Motucka alps, 2000 ft., Haast, Munrn ; 
Canterbury, Travers ; Otago, Hector and Buchanan. The smallest known species of the 
genus, and the smallest flowering plant, except Tillcea and Lemna in the islands. 
Two species of the Australian genus Opercularia are described (erroneously) by Gsertner 
as having been found in New Zealand by Banks and Solander; there are no specimens of 
them in Banks’s Herbarium. The flowers are in iuvolucrate heads, and the capsules open by 
transverse lids. 
Order XXXIX. COMPOSITE. 
Herbs shrubs or trees. Leaves alternate, rarely opposite, simple in most 
of the New Zealand species, exstipulate. Flowers minute (florets), sessile, 
densely crowded on flat or conical receptacles, forming heads surrounded by 
an involucre consisting of 1 or more series of linear, erect bracts. Eeceptacle 
naked or bearing scales, smooth, pitted or papillose.— Calyx-tube adnate with 
the ovary ; limb 0 or represented by bristles scales or hairs (pappus). Co- 
rolla of two forms, tubular and 4- or 5 -cleft with valvate lobes, or tubular 
below with a long linear limb ; usually both kinds occur in each head, the 
outer ligulate (ray-florets) forming a ray of 1 or 2 series round the inner 
which are tubular (disk flowers) ; the ray -flowers are female or hermaphrodite, 
the disk-flowers male or hermaphrodite. Stamens 5, inserted on the tube of 
