Flora of New Zealand Series

Perennial hairy herb; rootstock rather stout. Stems with many branches, prostrate or semiprostrate, often nearly all subterranean when in loose shingle or sand; aerial stems 0-20 cm long, silky hairy or nearly glabrous. Petioles slender, 0.3-4 cm long, silky hairy or nearly glabrous. Lamina (2)-5- 20 × (2)-4-20 mm, usually broad-ovate to oblong or suborbicular, less commonly triangular, glabrous or densely hairy above, glabrate to moderately hairy below, sinuate or crenate; base truncate to cordate; apex generally emarginate, sometimes rounded or obtuse, especially when lamina triangular. Fls axillary, usually solitary; peduncles 0.5-2.5-(4) cm long, ± filiform. Bracts paired, linear. Sepals subequal, 3-7 mm long, obovate-oblong, with ± appressed hairs, mucronate or rounded. Corolla 0.8-2.2 × 0.9-2.3 cm, white. Capsule 5-7 mm diam., globose. Seeds moderately to densely covered with tuberculate ridges.

N.: Cape Palliser, Cape Terawhiti (near Wellington); S.: Marlborough and Canterbury, below c. 150 m (subsp. waitaha Sykes), above c. 350 m and C. Otago (subsp. verecundus).

Endemic.

Open dry grassland, among rocks, stones and gravel, old sand dunes ( subsp. waitaha), near lakes, rivers, canals and dams, in open sandy or stony sites ( subsp. verecundus).

FL Oct-Mar.

The related Australian C. erubescens Sims usually has deeply, palmately divided lvs which are considerably larger than those of C. verecundus and occasionally more like C. fractosaxosa. The corolla in C. erubescens is usually pink and larger than in C. verecundus, especially the newly described, smaller-flowered subsp. waitaha (see, Sykes, W. R., in Connor, H. E. and Edgar, E., New Zealand J. Bot. 25: 153-154. (1987)).