Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
[Introduction to 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.