Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

4. Pachycladon, Hook. f

4. Pachycladon, Hook. f.

A short stout depressed alpine herb, clothed with stellate pubescence. Rootstock long, thick and fleshy. Leaves small, rosulate. Flowers small, white. Sepals equal. Petals with long claws. Stamens free, toothless. Pod laterally compressed, linear-oblong; valves boat-shaped, keeled, not winged; nerves obscure; septum imperfect. Seeds 3–5 in each cell, obovoid; funicles short. Cotyledons incumbent.

The genus consists of a single species, confined to the southern portion of the colony. Sir J. D. Hooker remarks that in technical characters it is intermediate between the tribes Sisymbrieæ. and Lepidineæ, but is probably referable to the latter.

1. P. novæ-zealandiæ, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 724.—Root very long, fusiform, stout and fleshy, as thick as the finger, in old specimens branched above, crowned with a dense rosette of imbricating radical leaves. Leaves ¼–1 in. long; blade oblong, pinnatifidly lobed, gradually narrowed into a short flat petiole, clothed with stellate pubescence. Cauline leaves few, smaller, digitately lobed. Peduncles numerous, springing from below the leaves and slightly longer than them, 2–5-flowered. Petals obovate-spathulate, almost twice as long as the sepals. Pods on short stout pedicels, ⅕–⅓ in. long, laterally compressed; valves keeled, not winged. Seeds 3–5 in each cell, obovoid, red-brown.— Ic. Plant, t. 1009; Buch, in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xiv. (1882) t. 24, f. 1; Kirk, Students' Fl. 32. Braya novæ - zealandiæ, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 13. South Island: Otago - Mount Alta, Hector and Buchanan! Mount: St. Bathan's, Mount Pisa, Mount Kyeburn, Mount Gardrona, &c., Petrie! 4500–6500 ft. A very singular plant. Mr. Buchanan's P. glabra (Trans. N.Z. Inst. xiv. t. 24, f. 2) is a form with rather larger and almost glabrous leaves, with sharply pointed ascending lobes. It passes insensibly into the ordinary state.