Flora of New Zealand Series

Evergreen, often spreading, glabrous shrub, to c. 1 m high, lacking black glands; rhizomes 0. Shoots reddish when young, ± flattened below infl. and on young vegetative shoots. Petioles 1-2 mm long, winged. Lamina 2-6 × 0.7-2.3 cm, ovate to lanceolate-ovate or elliptic, glaucous and dotted with pellucid glands beneath; base broadly cuneate; apex acute to mucronate. Panicles terminal, 5-12-flowered; pedicels mostly 1-2 cm long. Sepals somewhat unequal, 8-13 mm long, elliptic or elliptic-ovate, accrescent, eglandular, entire; apex mucronate or sharply acute. Corolla 6-8 cm diam., yellow, ± patent and thus rather flat; petals ± broad-obovate, rather irregular, much > sepals. Stamens ?-3/4 length of petals, in 5 bundles. Ovary becoming red after anthesis; styles 5, from = to 1.25× ovary. Capsule 1.5-2 cm long excluding persistent styles, ovoid, dry. Seeds 1.8-2 mm long, narrowly cylindric, with a coarse, shallow reticulum and a wing down one side, mostly abortive.

S.: Kongahu (near Karamea, Buller), near Lake Paringa (S. Westland).

S. and S.C. China 1988

Common in grass and on the margin of scrub along c.200 m of roadside, presumably an escape from cultivation.

FL Jan-Mar.

This sp., along with H. henryi, belongs to the taxonomically difficult sect. Ascyreia Choisy. N.Z. material of H. kouytchense closely resembles the illustration and description in Bot. Mag. 157: t. 9345 (1934), except that the stamens are nearly 3/4 as long as the petals. This is one of the main characters separating H. kouytchense from the segregate sp. H. wilsonii Robson [ see Robson, N. K. B., Jour. Roy. Hort. Soc. 95: 492-493 (1970)]. In the latter the stamens are only c. 1/2 as long as the petals. It appears that H. kouytchense is now uncommon in cultivation in N.Z.