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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
3. Capsella, Medicus
3. Capsella, Medicus.
Annual or rarely perennial branched herbs, of small size and weak habit, glabrous or pilose. Radical leaves entire or pinnatifid. Flowers small, white, racemed. Sepals spreading, equal at the base. Petals short. Pods oblong, ovoid, or obcordate, laterally compressed; valves convex or boat-shaped; septum thin; style short. Seeds numerous, in 2 rows. Cotyledons incumbent.
A small genus, scattered over the temperate regions of both hemispheres.
| 1. | C. procumbens, Fries Novit. Fl. Suec. Mant. i. 14.—Slender, perfectly glabrous. Stems numerous from the root, 2–6 in. long, decumbent at the base, ascending at the tips. Leaves ¼–¾ in. long; lower ovate, oblong, or spathulate, entire or lobed or irregularly pinnatifid, petioled; upper smaller, more sessile, often entire. Flowers white, very small. Racemes elongating in fruit; pedicels filiform, spreading. Pod ovoid, ⅙–⅕ in. long; valves boat-shaped. Seeds 10–15 in each cell. Benth. Fl. Austral. i. 81. C. elliptica, C. A. Mey. in Ledeb. Fl. Alt. iii. 199; Kirk, Students' Fl. 33.
South Island: Otago—On cliffs exposed to sea-spray: Oamaru; Wai-kouaiti; near Dunedin; Petrie! September–October. A widely distributed plant, found in Europe, western and central Asia, north-west and South America, and Australia. C. bursa-pastoris, Mænch, the common "Shepherd's Purse," is now established as a weed in most parts of the colony. It is an erect annual, with spreading pinnatifid radical leaves and triangular cuneate or obcordate pods, arranged in a long lax raceme. |