Flora of New Zealand Series

willow-leaved hakea

Large erect shrub or small tree, glabrous except for silky hairs on very young shoots and lvs. Shoots angular. Lvs sessile to shortly petiolate, flattened, 60-110 × 5-15 mm, narrowly elliptic-oblong or narrow-elliptic, entire, coriaceous; base attenuate; apex acute, not spiny. Fls in fascicles of up to c. 20. Pedicels 3-7 mm long. Perianth white, < pedicel; limb curled back against tube. Ovary sessile; style glabrous; stigma cone large, oblique. Fr. 2-2.7 × 1.3-1.6 cm, tuberculate; beak curved. Seed 15-20 × 5-7 mm (including wing), black; wing extending down 1 side.

N.: S. end of Ninety Mile Beach (N. Auckland), S. to the Waikato and Rotorua areas, Wellington area; S.: N.W. Nelson.

E. Australia 1908

Locally common, open hillsides and gumlands.

FL Aug-Nov.

Willow-leaved hakea was introduced for forming hedges and windbreaks but has long been extensively naturalised on the gumlands of N. Auckland. Although still useful, its propensity to naturalise has also made it a noxious weed. It has been known previously in N.Z. as H. saligna.

Although H. salicifolia is the only flat-leaved, non-prickly sp. wild in N.Z., others are in cultivation, especially the common H. laurina R. Br., pincushion shrub.