Flora of New Zealand Series

Acaulous herb with thick, fleshy contractile root below the main bulb and surrounding subsidiary small bulbils; outer scales of tunic brown, 7-11-nerved. Lvs 3-foliolate. Petioles usually < 30 cm long, glabrous or sparsely hairy; stipular wing long-ciliate. Lamina of leaflets equal, sessile, to 30 × 40 mm, broadly obcordate, with rather shallow sinus, 2-lobed, rounded, glabrous above, hairy or glabrous below, finely reticulate below, lacking calli. Infl. 7-26 cm long, an 8-15-flowered cyme, glabrous or hairy; pedicels very variable in length, glabrous or hairy. Bracts c. 3 mm long, ± ciliate, lacking calli. Sepals 4-6 mm long, lanceolate to elliptic, glabrous; calli 2, prominent. Petals 9-15 mm long, oblanceolate or oblong-obovate, whitish or very pale mauve-pink, glabrous. Stamens at 2 levels; filaments hirsute with spreading hairs above, dilated and glabrous below, the longer c. 4 mm long. Styles < to = lower stamen whorl, hirsute. Capsule not seen.

N.: widespread; S.: widespread in northern half.

Probably C. America 1958

Waste and cultivated ground.

FL Nov-Apr.

O. vallicola is most closely related to O. latifolia and resembles that sp. in the bulb scale nerves, the umbel-like cymes and the absence of orange calli on the leaflets, although it is more like O. debilis in the stylar hairs and in not having fishtail-shaped lvs. It is often confused with these 2 spp., but O. vallicola has paler fls and seems to be much less common than either of them. Plants of O. vallicola in N.Z. apparently have styles in one position only.