Flora of New Zealand Series

coast tea tree

Shrub or small tree 1-2-(7) m high. Bark peeling in thin strips. Branchlets and lvs silky-hairy when very young, soon glabrous. Lvs glabrous except when very young, subsessile or very shortly petiolate, spreading to erect. Lamina 17-30 × 5-9 mm, oblong-obovate or almost oblong, dotted with numerous minute dark glands; main longitudinal veins 3 or 5; base cuneate; apex mucronulate but otherwise blunt. Fls axillary, subsessile, solitary. Bracts and bracteoles brown and papery. Hypanthium c. 3 mm long, broad-campanulate; calyx lobes c. 2 mm long, triangular, ± caducous, with margin and back ± clothed in silky white hairs. Petals 6-8 mm long, suborbicular or broad-ovate, white, patent. Stamens c. 20, ± = style. Ovary apex clothed in fine, dense, appressed, white hairs; style stout. Capsule 7-10-celled, c. 6 mm wide., broad and flat-topped, woody, long-persistent, exserted beyond receptacle rim. Seeds numerous; sterile seeds linear, wingless; fertile seeds larger, ovate, with lamellate wings.

N.: Auckland, Matakana Id (Bay of Plenty), Napier Hill, Taita (Hutt Valley); S.: Nelson.

S.E. Australia, Tasmania 1982

Coastal places, scrub near gardens or parks.

Coast tea tree has been used for stabilizing coastal sand dunes and is also grown as an ornamental. It is easily distinguished from the N.Z. sp. by the lf shape and the number of cells in the ovary (easily seen in the capsule).