Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Near Fowler Pass, head of the Freeman River, Lake Manapouri, 1100 m. altitude. Type: BD 75689, G. Simpson, March 1942.

Closely branched woody shrub to 20 cm. tall, the branches at first prostrate, occ. rooting, ascending at tips. Branchlets glab. and shining, c. 1 cm. diam. with obviously quadrifarious lvs on; length of internodes us. < diam. Lvs imbricate to spreading, occ. deflexed, 5-7 × 3·5-5 mm., ovate-spathulate (us. rather broad trowel-shaped), very coriac. and equally glossy on both surfaces; lf-bud with open sinus, the lamina cuneately narrowed into broad "petiole" of quite similar texture; lamina subacute, slightly concave, glab. except for fine white cilia fringing thick cartilaginous entire margin; midrib forming rounded keel. Infls lateral, simple, us. only one pair in axils of lvs just behind vegetative growing point; each sessile spikelet c. 1 cm. long, with 2 sessile fls. Bracts opp., c. 3 mm. long, subacute, ciliolate. Calyx-lobes 4, each c. 5 × 2 mm., obtuse to subacute, slightly keeled, ciliolate. Corolla white, tube slightly < calyx, broad-cylindric, lobes us. 4, occ. 5, c. 4·5 × 3·5 mm., broad-ovate. Capsule erect, c. 4 × 3 mm. broadly oblong, glab., c. = calyx, the valves splitting deeply loculicidally as well as septicidally.

DIST.: S. Fiordland mountains, open grassy places: Kepler Mountains; Wilmot Pass; mountains bordering Doubtful Sound.

FL. 12-3.

There is some superficial resemblance to Pygmea tetragona but no details of structure suggest any close relationship.

Simpson's specimens from several localities and those of H. H. Allan and M. Cookson from different places are all quite uniform; none show any but very old capsules.

Vegetatively these plants come nearest to pauciramosa and in their purely lateral infls they resemble var. pauciramosa; the individual spikelet is even more reduced than those in the H. epacridea - h haastii group.