Flora of New Zealand Series

Low, bushy shrub to 1.5 m high, often with many branches near ground level. Adult lvs subsessile, 2-8-(15) × 1-2-(5) mm, narrow-elliptic to narrow-oblong; upper surface with soft, erect, simple hairs; lower surface with dense tomentum of long-rayed stellate hairs and with some simple hairs on midrib and margins; margins entire, usually strongly revolute to midrib; stipules 2-4 mm long, persistent. Juvenile lvs larger and not or less revolute. Infl. a panicle of small, few-flowered terminal and axillary cymes. Calyx cream, spreading to reflexed. Petals 0, but occasionally calyx with petaloid outgrowth. Anthers ovoid. Ovary with simple and stellate hairs, c. 1/2 immersed in calyx tube at anthesis, c. ⅓ immersed at fruiting; apex with tuft of simple white hairs. Fr. cocci opening by opercula occupying from ⅞ to nearly the whole of their inner faces.

N.: mostly north of Kaitaia, occasional southwards to Waitemata County ( var. polifolia (Reiss. et F. Muell.) L. Moore), widespread from N. Cape Peninsula southwards; S.: a few places in Nelson, Marlborough and N. Canterbury ( var. ericifolia (Hook.) L. Moore).

Both vars also indigenous to S.E. Australia.

Common in scrub and early stages of regenerating forest, sometimes in plantations of introduced trees.

FL Sep-Nov.