Heterocentron elegans
ζ*Heterocentron elegans (Schldl.) Kuntze ζ*, Spanish shawl, has been collected wild on banks in New Plymouth. It is abundant in cultivation on rock walls, banks, in hanging baskets and as a ground cover plant in warmer parts of N.Z., where it spreads vegetatively by its stems freely rooting at the nodes. A prostrate ± herbaceous perennial; stems slender, creeping, hairy; lamina of lvs 5-25 × 4-14 mm, narrowly to broadly ovate, 3-nerved to base; fls solitary, on slender, pink, antrorsely hairy pedicels; floral tube campanulate, densely hispid with red hairs; corolla bright rosy magenta with 4 broadly elliptic-obovate or suborbicular petals 1-1.7 mm diam.; stamens 8, unequal, purple, with whitish tipped connectives. The sp. has hitherto been known in N.Z. as Schizocentron elegans or Heeria rosea. (Mexico and C. America, 1978).
