Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: "Banks of the Keri-Keri river, &c., Bay of Islands". Type: K, No. 577 Keri-Keri Mission Station, R.C., 1834. Endemic.

Round-headed shrub 2-3 m. tall with many slender woody branches. Lvs c. 6 × 3 cm., oval, entire, obtuse, on petioles c. 1 cm. long; margins not recurved; upper surface glab. except for minute hairs in groove of midrib, veins depressed; lower surface blue-green becoming buff when dry, closely covered with sessile stellate hairs, veins slightly prominent with longer hairs, some of them simple. Infl. a much-branched close corymb with rounded top up to 10 cm. across; bracts broad, brown, scarious; pedicels c. 3 mm. long. Fls yellow; calyx-tube villous with simple and long-rayed sessile stellate hairs; sepals 2·5 mm. long, falling early; petal-limb cuneate to truncate at base, soon reflexed; stamens > petals, connective not elongated above anther; style divided to 1/2 length; capsule rounded 3·5 × 2·5 mm., c. 2/3 immersed in calyx-tube, retaining indumentum and greyish colour; operculum c. 1/2 length of coccus; seeds dark brown, shining, c. 1·6 × 1 mm.

DIST.: N. On poor clay hills from Far North to Bay of Plenty and west of Te Kuiti. Kumarahou, Gumdiggers' soap.

FL. 9-10. FT. 11-1.

Cheeseman (Man. N.Z. Fl. 1925, 553) includes this sp. under the Tasmanian P. elliptica Labill., but from all forms of this it differs in the presence on lf-veins and calyx-tube of sessile stellate hairs with long soft rays. The sp. is very uniform throughout its range in N.Z.