Linaria maroccana Hook.f.
Taprooted annual; stems erect, sometimes much-branched, to c. 40 cm tall. Vegetative parts glabrous. Lvs 1.5-4 cm long, narrow-linear, green; apex ± obtuse. Infl. many-flowered, glabrous or glandular-puberulent; fls in rather lax and elongated racemes. Bracts 3-5-(10) mm long, linear to lanceolate, 1/4-3/4 length of pedicels. Calyx 4-6 mm long, lobed almost to base; lobes lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, usually glandular-hairy, occasionally glabrous, acute or acuminate. Corolla 25-30 mm long (including slender, straight, acute spur c. 15 mm long), usually crimson or purplish, sometimes pale yellow to orange, pink, or bicoloured, except for yellow or orange, puberulent pouch; upper lip 10-15 mm long. Capsule 3-5 mm diam., globose. Seeds 1.7-1.9 mm long, curved, wingless, black, strongly ribbed.
S.: a number of places in Canterbury, and collected once from Invercargill.
N. Africa 1958
Casual escape from cultivation, mainly in waste places and roadsides in settled areas, especially on stony ground.
FL Oct-Feb.
L. maroccana is commonly cultivated as an ornamental annual, the seeds often being sold under cv. names according to fl. colour. Wild plants reflect this variation to some extent, although predominantly fls are crimson or purple. Although the sp. typically has glandular infls, a few specimens are glabrate or even glabrous and thus approach the related L. bipartita (Vent.) Willd., but all have the corolla spur longer than the upper lip, whereas it is shorter in L. bipartita. Thus, the record of L. bipartita in Allan (1940) is almost certainly based on such atypical plants of L. maroccana.
