Flora of New Zealand Series

Low-growing, ± creeping shrub to 0.5 m high. Adult and juvenile lvs sessile, 10-30 × 7-15 mm, ovate or broad-ovate to oblong; upper surface scabrid with large, rigid, simple hairs; lower surface with dense stellate tomentum, the hairs sessile and stalked, ferruginous on veins; margins sinuate to denticulate, not revolute; stipules 2-3 mm long, deciduous. Infl. a small, few-flowered terminal or subterminal cyme. Calyx cream, ± spreading. Petals 0. Anthers ovoid. Ovary with apical tuft of golden, simple hairs, completely immersed in calyx tube at anthesis, c. 1/2 immersed at fruiting. Fr. cocci opening by opercula occupying just over 1/2 of their inner faces.

N.: North Cape area, coastal hills N. of Dargaville.

Also indigenous to S.E. Australia.

In low scrub, especially on clay gumland.

FL Oct.

N.Z. plants were treated in Allan (1961) as P. prunifolia Fenzl   var. edgerleyi (Hook. f.) L. Moore, and seem to represent an endemic var.