# Manual of the New Zealand Flora/Amaryllideæ

Additions and Corrections
Order LXXXI. AMARYLLIDEÆ.
Usually perennial herbs, sometimes of large size. Rootstock bulbous, tuberous, tufted or creeping. Leaves generally all radical, narrow, not usually equitant or distichous. Flowers regular or slightly irregular, hermaphrodite, in terminal umbels or racemes or panicles, rarely solitary; peduncles or scapes naked or bracteate. Perianth superior, petaloid, tube long or short, limb 6-lobed or -partite, sometimes bearing at the throat a petaloid corona (Narcissus, &c.). Stamens 6, inserted on the perianth-tube or at the base of the segments and opposite to them; filaments free or united at the base; anthers 2-celled, versatile, introrse. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; style filiform or columnar, stigma simple or 3-fid; ovules numerous, in 2 series in the inner angle of each cell, anatropous. Fruit usually a 3-celled capsule with loculicidal dehiscence, rarely an indehiscent berry. Seeds generally numerous, sometimes reduced to 1 or 2 in each cell; albumen fleshy; embryo small, axile.
A well-known and widely distributed order, found in all warm and temperate countries, but (like the preceding family) decidedly rare in Asia. Genera 65; species under 700. It includes the American aloe (Agave americana), which can be applied to a wonderful variety of uses. Both it and other species of Agave are valuable fibre-plants, A. rigida being the well-known sisal hemp. ​The ornamental species are very numerous, the principal genera being Narcissiis, Galanthus (snowdrop), Leucoium (snowflake), Hippeastrum, Amaryllis, Vallota, Crinum, Alstrœmeria, Agave, Fourcroya. The single genus found in New Zealand is widely diffused.
1. HYPOXIS, Linn.
Small herbs. Rhizome bulbous or tuberous, coated with a membranous or fibrous sheath. Leaves radical, narrow, flat or terete, often hairy. Scape 1- or many-flowered. Perianth regular, tube wanting; segments 6, nearly equal, spreading. Stamens 6, inserted on the base of the segments and shorter than them; anthers erect, linear or oblong, dorsifixed. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; ovules numerous in each cell, 2-seriate; style short, columnar; stigmas 3, stout, erect, distinct or connate. Capsule globose or oblong, membranous, 3-valved or circumscissile below the top. Seeds small, subglobose; testa crustaceous, shining, usually more or less beaked at the hilum.
Species over 50, mainly confined to southern or tropical Africa, a few only in Asia, Australasia, or America.
1. H. pusilla, Hook. f. Fl. Tasm. ii. 36, t. 130b.—Very small, 1–2 in. high. Rhizome globose, bulb-like, clothed with the setose remains of the old leaves, ⅓ in. diam. Leaves 3–6, ½–2 in. long, filiform, wiry, flexuous, grooved down the inner face, base widened into a scarious sheath. Scapes shorter than the leaves, 1–3-flowered. Flowers small, ⅙ in. diam. Perianth-segments ovate-lanceolate, acute. Stamens short, not half as long as the perianth-segments; anthers linear, basifixed. Stigmas lanceolate, free. Capsule globose, ⅛ in. diam.—Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 275; Benth. Fl. Austral. vi. 449. H. hygrometrica, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 253 (not of R. Br.).
North Island: Hawke's Bay, Colenso. South Island: Marlborough—Sandy ground near the mouth of the Wairau River, J. Macmahon! Canterbury—Banks Peninsula, Travers, Armstrong! Cockayne! Canterbury Plains, Armstrong! November–April.
Probably not uncommon on the eastern side of the South Island, but very easily overlooked. Also a native of Victoria and Tasmania.