Flora of New Zealand Series

P. tainui Hector in T.N.Z.I. 11, 1879, 429.

P. mollis Col. in T.N.Z.I. 25, 1893, 327.

Type locality: Tasmania, "in capita Van-Diemen". Type: ?

Erect-growing many-branched shrub up to 4 m. tall. Lvs 5-7 × 2-3 cm., oval, minutely crenulate, on petioles c. 1 cm. long; margins ± recurved; upper surface wrinkled, with scattered stellate hairs when young; lower surface fully clothed with felted sessile stellate hairs with scattered stalked stellate hairs overtopping them; nerves prominent with similar hairs. Infl. ± pyramidal, fl.-clusters lateral and terminal on lfless branchlets c. 10 cm. long; bracts narrow, mealy-hairy; pedicels 2*5-4 mm. long. Fls pale green, c. 6 mm. diam.; calyx-tube stellatehairy, mealy; speals c. 2 mm. long; petals 0; stamens < sepals; style divided to > 1/2 length; capsule c. 1/2 immersed in calyx-tube, with persistent sepals; operculum > 3/4 length of coccus; seeds dark, not shining, c. 1·5 × 1 mm.

DIST.: N.: Known in a few coastal localities from Kawhia Harbour to Mokau. Ch.: F. A. D. Cox (W). Tainui.

FL. 11-1. FT 1-2.

The type specimen of P. tainui (A, 5135, Mokau, Sir J. Hector) matches Tasmanian specimens well, though it, like most N.Z. specimens, has smaller and more oval lvs than those shown in Labillardière's t. 87. Colenso specimens of P. mollis in K, A, and W, approach Tasmanian ones even more closely; the only other specimens seen from Colenso's locality "Puketapu, Napier" are those (in W) collected by Petrie in Jan. 1899 "growing in a wayside hedge". Cheeseman (Man. N.Z. Fl. 1925, 554) regarded the Hawke's Bay plants as naturalized. Similar specimens from "Mr Potts' garden" [Christchurch] are in the Kirk Herb. (W). P. apetala is still quite widely grown as a garden or hedge shrub, some of it propagated by cuttings from the naturally-occurring grove at Mokau.

Also supplied by N.Z. nurserymen under the name P. apetala is a plant differing in the following respects: lvs large (up to 12 × 6 cm.), flat, pointed, always glab. above and with distinctive indumentum below, the stellate hairs being all stalked and very regularly and rather openly spaced so that the lf-epidermis shows through, giving a pale grey-green rather than white or buff colour; scattered simple hairs are present also; infl. is less rigid, fls are small (c. 5 mm. diam.), styles less divided, operculum small and ill-defined, the coccus ind. or opening by a median longitudinal split, flowering much earlier, and chromosome number different. This apparently closely approaches P. aspera Sieb. ex DC. Prodr. 2, 1825, 33, but Australian specimens of the latter examined for comparison have scattered soft stellate hairs on upper lf-surface. This plant has escaped from gardens but there is no reason to believe that it is indigenous to N.Z. A closely related form early became naturalized in parts of Canterbury (specimens at W from Geraldine, Mathias, 1891, and at CM from Oxford, Waimate, Geraldine and Wigley's Run, Waitoki, J.B. Armstrong).