Flora of New Zealand Series

dimorphotheca

Straggling, glandular perennial herb, becoming woody toward base, often forming dense mats. Stems glabrous or clothed in short hairs and becoming glabrous, procumbent, ascending at tips, rooting along ground. Lvs alternate, moderately clothed in short, erect hairs, fleshy, narrow-elliptic to obovate, acute, mucronate, cuneate to the ± amplexicaul base, irregularly dentate or denticulate with 3-7 teeth on each side, 5-10 × 1-2-(3) cm; lvs near capitula becoming smaller, narrower, often almost lanceolate or linear, with fewer teeth or sometimes entire. Capitula solitary, 4-7 cm diam. Involucral bracts in 2 rows, sparsely to moderately hairy, ciliate, lanceolate, 12-15 mm long. Ray florets 14-20; ligules white on upper surface, bluish mauve and often lined on lower surface, sometimes tinged green, (1.6)-2-3 cm long; disc florets numerous, dull bluish purple, with glabrous lobe apices. Achenes obovoid, glabrous, 3-angled, faintly reticulate and with central rib between angles, 6-7 mm long.

N.: Northland, Auckland City, Rangitoto Id, Wanganui, vicinity of Wellington; S.: Nelson City and vicinity, Amberley (N. Canterbury).

South Africa 1977

Coastal cliffs, waste places.

FL Aug-Jan.

Poisonous (Connor 1977).

O. fruticosum is widely cultivated especially in coastal areas where it carpets banks and cliffs; it has established locally in the wild as a garden escape. Both wild and cultivated plants have previously been recorded as O. ecklonis. Most N.Z. material, both wild and cultivated, is prostrate and mat-forming with the stems only woody toward the base, as in O. fruticosum, rather than decumbent to erect to 1 m tall and distinctly woody as in O. ecklonis. However, the few achenes present in wild collections are sharply 3-angled and reticulate as in O. ecklonis, rather than smooth and obscurely angled as in O. fruticosum.