Manoao colensoi

Detailed description

Gynodioecious, evergreen trees up to 20 m tall and 1 m diameter, with uniformly erect stems, branches, and branchlets, and strong sucker shoots from horizontal underground stems. Bark on mature trees forming thick irregular scales and vertical scale complexes, shedding slowly, leaving behind distinct hammer marks and wave patterns; outer surface of scales silvery-grey to grey-brown, undersurface crimson, glistening with fresh resin, hard, with silvery-grey, weathered, often scalloped margins; shed bark forming a small raised mound of litter filled with fine roots at base of tree. Roots of mature trees oblique, peg-like, deeply descending; mycorrhizal nodules simple or in extensive branched complexes, epidermal hairs absent. Roots and underground stems of shrubs and sucker shoots forming dense red-brown entanglements; aerenchyma universally present in roots and underground stems under anaerobic conditions. Cotyledons c. 12.0 × 2.0 mm, submembranous, spreading horizontally, epistomatic. Primary axis of seedlings and juveniles erect. Leaves polymorphic; on adult branchlets c. 3.0 × 1.5 mm, rhomboid, scale-like, keeled, closely imbricate and whipcord-like, decurrent at base, spirally arranged, amphistomatic; florin ring distinct though sunken; marginal frill distinct, continuous; older leaves very persistent, brown, semi-woody. Leaves on seedlings at first 5.0–10.0 mm long, subulate, bristle-like, spreading, decurrent at base, spirally arranged, amphistomatic; successive leaves initially longer, becoming progressively shorter, bilaterally flattened, falcate to triangular, graded in size, and secondarily 3-ranked and spiralled; ultimately scale-like, keeled, imbricate. Male cones solitary or rarely paired, terminal on foliage branchlets, sessile, with up to 12 sporophylls each with 2 sporangia; pollen with a thin-walled, finely tuberculate cappa and 2 prominent sacci. Female cones solitary, terminal on foliage branchlets, erect by curvature of cone axis, consisting of 2–6 spoon-shaped ± spreading fertile bracts separated by short internodes, sometimes with a sterile cap; ovules borne in a median position on adaxial surface of fertile bract, initially obliquely inclined towards cone axis and partially inverted, becoming erect at maturity; bracts in distal region of cone sterile, reduced in size. Seeds 1–5, erect, crowded if more than one; c. 3.5 × 2.5 mm, narrowly oblong, rounded in cross-section, with a small rounded recurved micropyle; seed coat purple to black with a glaucous sheen, finely striated; epimatium swollen, fleshy, greenish-yellow, ± smooth-margined, forming a split keeled asymmetrical sheath around base of seed.