Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

3. Notospartium, Hook. f

3. Notospartium, Hook. f.

Leafless shrubs with slender much-compressed pendulous branchlets. Flowers rather small, in lateral racemes. Calyx campanulate, 5-toothed; teeth short, about equal. Standard obovate-obcordate, narrowed into a short claw, shortly reflexed; wings oblong, shorter than the keel, with an incurved auricle at the base; keel hatchet-shaped, obtuse. Upper stamen free, remainder connate into a sheath. Ovary sessile or nearly so, linear; ovules numerous; style incurved. Pod shortly stipitate, linear, straight or falcate, compressed, 3–10-jointed, membranous, indehiscent; beak short, Seeds 1 to each joint, oblong; radicle twisted, with a double flexure.

A genus of 2 closely allied species, both confined to New Zealand. It has the leafless habit and compressed branchlets of Carmichœlia, but differs in the linear many-jointed pod, and in other respects.

Flowers pink. Pods ¾–1½ in. long, ⅛ in. wide, straight 1. N. Carmichœliœ.
Flowers purple. Pods ¾–1 in. long, 1/15 in. wide, falcate, torulose 2. N. torulosum.