Flora of New Zealand Series

Cape honey flower

Shrub to c. 2 m high with stout, soft-wooded, hollow stems and suckering root system. Lvs to 50-(100) cm long, glaucous below. Stipules fused and sheathing, 7-15 cm long, ovate, cuspidate. Rachis winged. Leaflets 11-21, sessile, 8-15 × 3.5-7.5 cm, gradually tapering towards apex, ± folded, regularly and deeply serrate with teeth c. 1 cm long; basal pair smaller. Racemes dense, to c. 40 cm long, puberulent. Pedicels 1-2.5 cm long, dark red, with short glandular hairs. Bracts ovate or narrow-ovate, to 4 cm long, reddish brown, short-acuminate. Fls foetid, dark reddish brown. Anterior calyx segment much < others, gibbous, with short glandular hairs. Posterior calyx segments 2-3 cm long, ovate, with short glandular hairs. Petals much < calyx. Stamens c. 2 cm long. Style 1.5-2 cm long. Capsule 2.5-5 cm long, papery, acutely angled. Seeds 5-6 mm long, ± broad-ellipsoid, keeled, shining black.

N.: from near North Cape southwards, especially common in northern areas; S.: very local from Farewell Spit area to Bluff in coastal areas.

South Africa 1878

Cultivation escape, now well established and sometimes forming dense standsroadsides, waste places, sand dunes, margins of scrubland and similar areas of modified vegetation.

FL Jul-Apr.

Poisonous (Connor 1977). However, because of the copious nectar secretion it is also a favoured plant for some N.Z. birds.