Flora of New Zealand Series

Perennial herb; stems slender, straggling or scrambling, angled, glabrous or with retrorse hairs, c. 10-70 cm long. Lvs and stipules in distant whorls of 4; petioles 0.5-3 mm long; lamina 2-10-(20) × 0.8-3-(4) mm, usually narrowly elliptic, oblanceolate to spathulate; margins and midrib ciliolate; apex usually mucronate or cuspidate. Fls (1)-3-4 in terminal or axillary cymes; peduncles and pedicels ± deflexed at fruiting, filiform; peduncles (1)-3-20-(30) mm long; pedicels 1-11-(15) mm long; bracts much < lvs and stipules except at base of infl. Corolla 2-3 mm diam., white; lobes ovate-oblong or elliptic-oblong, acute to mucronate. Mericarps 1-1.5 mm diam., globose, ± finely rugulose, glabrous or sparsely clothed in appressed hairs.

N.; S.; St.

Endemic.

Lowland to montane regions, damp, shady and wet places, such as forest clearings and margins, scrub, stream and lake sides, moist pastures, rushland in seepages and near swamps.

FL Nov-May.

This variable sp. was treated in Allan (1961) as G. tenuicaule Cunn. non Krocker. It is closely related to G. propinquum; see under that sp.