Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Gordon's Knob, Nelson. Type: K, Monro 105.

Small slender branched subshrub up to c. 15 cm. tall; branches slender, diverging, clad in lf-remains; branchlets densely clad in imbricate, ascending, finally recurved, lvs. Lamina very narrow-linear, ± 10-15-(20) × 1-1·5 mm., subcoriac.; upper surface with a delicate deciduous pellicle, lower clad in a very thin white appressed tomentum; apex produced into a delicate acicular point c. 2 mm. long, easily broken off; margin recurved nearly or quite to midrib; base slightly narrowed to pale scarious ± pilose sheath ± 8 × 1-1·5 mm. Scape ± 5-10 cm. long, very slender to almost filiform, ± clad in loose floccose deciduous hairs; bracts few, narrow-subulate, minute, sts absent. Capitula c. 1-2 cm. diam.; phyll. subulate to linear-lanceolate, erect, membr., c. 7 mm. long. Ray-florets several, prominent, up to c. 12 mm. long, limb gradually widening to apex; disk-florets funnelform to campanulate, hardly > 5 mm. long. Achenes slender, compressed-cylindric, ± 3 mm. long, clad in ascending stiff hairs; pappus-hairs white, up to 4·5 mm. long, very minutely barbellate.

DIST.: S. Montane to subalpine grassland, fellfield, rocky places throughout.

A distinct but somewhat polymorphic sp. not so far resolved.