Manual of the New Zealand Flora/Primulaceæ
Order XLIV. PRIMULACEÆ.
Perennial or more rarely annual herbs. Leaves all radical, or cauline, and if so, opposite or alternate or whorled; stipules wanting. Flowers hermaphrodite, regular. Calyx usually inferior (half-superior in Samolus), 4–9-lobed or -partite. Corolla gamopetalous, with as many lobes as divisions of the calyx, lobes imbricate or contorted. Stamens equal in number to the corolla-lobes and opposite to them, sometimes alternating with staminodia, inserted in the tube or at the base of the corolla; anthers 2-celled, introrse. Ovary superior (inferior in Samolus), 1-celled; style short or long, stigma usually capitate; ovules 2 or more, attached to a free central placenta. Fruit a 1-celled capsule, 2–6-valved or dehiscing transversely. Seeds 2 to many, minute, angular; albumen fleshy or horny; embryo small, transverse.
A small order, comprising 20 genera and 250 species; widely spread, but most plentiful on the mountains of the north temperate zone, rare in the tropics, the southern species comparatively few. The properties of the order are insignificant; but it includes many well-known garden-plants, as the primrose, oxlip, auricula, Chinese primrose, cyclamen, &c. The sole New Zealand genus is best represented in the Southern Hemisphere, but one of the species is almost cosmopolitan.
1. SAMOLUS, Tourn.
Annual or perennial herbs. Leaves alternate. Flowers white, in terminal racemes or corymbs. Calyx half-superior, 5-fid, persistent. Corolla perigynous, subcampanulate; tube short; limb 5-lobed or -partite. Stamens 5, affixed to the corolla-tube, alternating with as many staminodes; filaments very short. Ovary globose, adnate to the calyx-tube, the tip free; style short; ovules numerous, anatropous. Capsule globose or ovoid, half-inferior, the free part 5-valved, many-seeded. Seeds minute, orbicular or angled; embryo transverse; hilum basilar.
Species 8, one of them almost cosmopolitan, most of the rest inhabiting various parts of the Southern Hemisphere.
1. S. repens, Pers. Syn. i. 171.—A glabrous perennial herb; stems 4–12 in. long, erect, ascending, or prostrate from a tufted rootstock, often emitting creeping and rooting stolons from the base. Leaves fleshy, very variable in size and shape, ⅙–1 in. long, obovate or iinear-obovate to linear-spathulate or linear, the lower ones usually broader and petiolate, the upper smaller and narrower and often sessile. Flowers about ¼ in. diam., axillary or in few-flowered terminal racemes; pedicels longer than the leaves. Calyx-tube adnate to about the middle of the ovary, lobes acute. Corolla broad, the tube usually about as long as the calyx-lobes. Capsule broadly ovoid, ⅙–⅕ in. diam.—F. Muell. Veg. Chath. Is. 34; Benth. Fl. Austral. iv. 271. S. littoralis, R. Br. Prodr. 428; A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 185; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 372; Raoul, Choix, 44; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 207; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 185. Sheffieldia repens, Forst. Char. Gen. 18; Prodr. n. 67.
Kermadec Islands, North and South Islands, Stewart Island, Chatham Islands, Auckland Islands: Common along the coast, in salt marsbes and on rocks. November–January. Also in Australia and Tasmania and New Caledonia.