Collomia cavanillesii Hook. & Arn.
Annual, branched or not, to c. 50 cm tall; stems often purplish, with short downward curled, white hairs, these dense towards the apex. Lvs apetiolate, 300-100 × 3-12 mm, usually entire, occasionally remotely toothed, linear or linear-lanceolate, glandular-hairy and viscid, later glabrous except for ciliolate margins. Infl. terminal, capitate, with subsessile fls, also with solitary axillary fls beneath on pedicels to c. 3 cm long. Bracts lanceolate to ovate, acuminate, often > infl., with very viscid glandular hairs. Calyx 9-12 mm long, lobed to c. 1/2 way, glandular-hairy and viscid; tube membranous; lobes lanceolate or narrow-lanceolate, almost = tube. Corolla c. 2-2.5 cm long, mostly creamy yellow at first, soon becoming pale salmon pink, rarely becoming mauve-pink; tube > calyx; lobes c. 8 mm long, elliptic, ± acute. Stamens exserted from tube; anthers blue. Capsule c. 5 mm long. Seed 2.5-3.5 mm long, obovoid, finely pitted, glabrous or puberulent.
N.: Auckland (early collections only); S.: Canterbury (Mackenzie Basin), C. Otago (many localities).
Chile, Argentina 1878
Roadsides and waste land in drier inland areas.
FL Nov-Apr.
N.Z. plants have sometimes been misidentified as C. grandiflora Douglas, a related N. American sp. with the corolla tube several time > the calyx. The sp. has also been recorded in N.Z. as C. biflora and C. coccinea.
