Manual of the New Zealand Flora/Balanophoreæ
Order LXXIV. BALANOPHOREÆ.
Low-growing fleshy leafless or scaly root-parasites. Stem reduced to a tuberous globular or misshapen often lobed rhizome. Peduncles short or long, thick, naked or clothed with scattered or imbricate scales. Flowers monœcious or diœcious, minute, crowded in spadix-like heads at the top of the peduncles. Male flowers: Perianth wanting or of 3–6 valvate lobes. Stamens 1–3, rarely more; filaments free or connate into a tube or column; anthers 2-many-celled. Female flowers: Perianth wanting or adnate to the ovary; limb absent or minutely toothed. Ovary ovoid or globose, 1–3-celled; styles 1–2, long or short or almost absent; stigmas simple or capitellate, sometimes sessile and discoid; ovules solitary in each cell, pendulous, anatropous. Fruit a minute crustaceous or coriaceous 1-seeded utricle or nut. Seed adherent to the pericarp, albuminous; embryo most minute.
A small but very remarkable order of fleshy root-parasites, chiefly tropical in its distribution, but nowhere plentiful. Genera, 14; species, 35.
1. DACTYLANTHUS, Hook. f.
A root-parasite. Rhizome usually subterranean, perennial, hard and woody, rounded or amorphous, often irregularly lobed, surface rough with small tubercles or warts. Flowering-stems or peduncles annual, numerous, crowded, clavate, clothed throughout with imbricate ovate or oblong brownish scales, the upper of which are larger and more closely placed, surrounding the spadices. Spadices numerous at the ends of the peduncles, slender, erect, cylindrical or slightly fusiform. Flowers very minute, densely packed, monœcious or diœcious. Male flowers: Perianth wanting or of 2 minute subulate processes. Stamens 1 or 2; filaments very short; anthers didymous, 2-celled. Female flowers: Perianth adnate to the ovary; limb of 2 or 3 erect subulate segments. Ovary stipitate, ovoid-oblong, 1-celled; style long, filiform; stigma terminal; ovule solitary, apparently pendulous. Fruit minute, crustaceous.
A very distinct monotypic genus, not closely allied to any other, confined to New Zealand.
1. D. Taylori, Hook. f. in Trans. Linn. Soc. xxii. (1859) 425, t. 76.—Rhizome stout, varying in size according to the age of the plant, 1–12 in. diam. or more. Flowering-stems 2–6 in. high, ½–1 in. diam., fleshy when young. Scales from ¼ to ½ in. long at the base of the peduncle, larger above, frequently 1 in. Spadices almost concealed by the upper scales, 10–30 together or more, ¾–1½ in. long. Flowers rather loosely placed towards the base of the spadix, very densely packed elsewhere.—Handh. N.Z. Fl. 255; Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxviii. (1896) 493.
North Island: Auckland—Plateau between Hokianga and the Northern Wairoa, P. Bedlington! from Port Charles to Cape Colville, H. Nairn! Thames goldfields, Kirk; East Cape district, H. Hill! Opepe (near Lake Taupo), H. Hill! T.F.C. Hawke'sBay—Tarawera and Nuhaka, A. Hamilton; Hawkston, F. Hutchinson! Taranaki—W. H. Skinner. Wellington–Waitotara, J. R. Annabell! Upper Rangitikei, J. P. Marshall; Upper Wanganui, Rev. R. Taylor, H. C. Field. Sea-level to 3500 ft. Pua-reinga. February–March.
Although I have seen a large number of specimens of this singular plant, few of them are in a satisfactory state, and the structure of both flowers and fruit should be worked out anew from fresh examples. Hooker describes the flowers as diœcious, but Mr. Hill assures me that both male and female peduncles frequently arise from the same rhizome. On the other hand, Mr. F. Hutchinson writes that the seeming mixture of sexes is due to the almost complete fusion of separate rhizomes growing close together. I possess a peduncle in which the lower flowers of all the spadices are female, and the upper ones male; but this is probably an uncommon variation. Some observers have doubted the invariable parasitism of the plant, but all the rhizomes I have seen are organically connected with the root on which they were growing, although the point of attachment is sometimes small, the rhizome wrapping over and enclosing the root, but remaining free from it for a considerable distance. The host is usually Schefflera digitata; but Panax arboreum, Myrsine Urvillei, Pittosporum, and Fagus are all frequently attacked.