Flora of New Zealand Series

Chilean flame creeper

Glabrous or glabrate perennial with thick rootstock and slender stems, sometimes high climbing by means of slender coiling petioles to 7 cm long. Lvs digitate; leaflets 5, sessile or subsessile. Lamina of terminal leaflet (1)-1.5-3.5 × 0.75-1.6 cm, obovate or oblong-ovate, entire, sometimes sparsely hairy below; base narrow-cuneate; apex rounded to emarginate; other leaflets smaller, especially basal pair. Fls solitary; pedicels > lvs, to c. 15 cm long, often purplish. Calyx regular; sepals 5.5-8 mm long, ovate-lanceolate, reddish green, accrescent and deep pink at fruiting; spur 2-3 cm long, curved and tapering, the proximal 1/2 reddish, the distal 1/2 green. Corolla irregular, usually scarlet, occasionally rose; lower 3 petals with very slender claw 7-8 mm long; limb (1)-1.3-1.5 × (1)-1.3-1.6 cm, squarish except for broadly emarginate apex; upper 2 petals c. 1.7 cm long, narrowly cuneate-obovate, broad-emarginate. Anthers green; filaments pink above. Frs thinly fleshy; carpels subglobose, often 1-2 remaining small; fertile carpels 5-7 mm diam., deep or dark blue.

N.: scattered small populations at least as far north as the Volcanic Plateau; S.: as far S. as Southland and inland from the coast to the Craigieburn intermontane region of Canterbury; St.: Halfmoon Bay and Port Pegasus.

Chile 1958

Mainly remnant stands of forest, also scrub, sometimes more remote forest clearings to which birds have probably brought seed.

FL Nov-Apr.

A fl. and fr. of Chilean flame creeper are illustrated in Fig. 118. It is an escape from cultivation. Plants are usually very uniform in N.Z. but a few with ± rose-coloured petals have been observed wild in the Hutt Valley. Such plants may have been confused with T. pentaphyllum which has been recorded wild only in the Waikato. T. pentaphyllum is similar to T. speciosum in the vegetative state, but the fls are easily distinguished (see under T. pentaphyllum).