Flora of New Zealand Series

Usually evergreen trees or shrubs, rarely twining, ± herbaceous parasites, often aromatic, generally with ⚥ fls, sometimes dioecious, gynodioecious or monoecious. Lvs usually alternate, very rarely opposite, usually simple, coriaceous, exstipulate. Fls usually in cymes, racemes, spikes, or panicles, rarely solitary, regular, small. Bracts small and caducous or 0, occasionally forming an involucre below the fls. Perianth (calyx) tube short, sometimes accrescent; perianth lobes or teeth (4)-6, usually in 2 series, the outer often smaller. Corolla 0. Stamens mostly 2× as many as perianth teeth, in as many as 3-4 or rarely more whorls, the innermost whorl usually, and outermost 2 whorls sometimes, reduced to staminodes, the remaining or 3rd whorl nearly always fertile; some filaments usually glandular towards the base. Ovary usually superior, rarely inferior, 1-celled; ovule 1; style terminal, simple, rarely 0; stigma entire or lobed. Fr. indehiscent, a berry or drupe, sometimes dry, sometimes partly covered by persistent perianth. Seed non-endospermic, pendulous.

c. 32 genera, 2000-2500 spp., mostly tropical and subtropical, some temperate.

Several genera not treated below contain spp. widely cultivated in N.Z. The large Asian genus Cinnamomum Blume is most often represented in N.Z. by the camphor tree, C. camphora (L.) J. S. Presl, the lvs and twigs of which emit a characteristic camphor scent when bruised and are bright pink when young; the yellowish fls are in axillary panicles. It long persists as a cultivation relic but has not become a weed such as it has on Norfolk and Lord Howe Is and in northern N.S.W.

Avocado, cvs of Persea americana Miller, is cultivated commercially in N. Auckland, Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay.