Flora of New Zealand Series

Hairy perennial herb with persistent elongated slender or stout taproot. Lvs all radical, rosulate, densely clothed in crisped, rather short hairs; petiole 1-3 cm long, with basal tuft of long creamy yellow to pale brown hairs. Lamina 1.5-4-(7) × 1-1.7 cm, oblanceolate, obovate, or almost elliptic, membranous; main veins 3; base attenuate; apex obtuse to acute. Scape 2-7-(14) cm long, with antrorse hairs. Spike 0.8-5.5 cm long, narrow-cylindric, dense. Bracts to almost = calyx, lanceolate-ovate or ovate; margins scarious; keel acute, ciliate, purplish. Sepals subequal, 1.7-2.3 mm long, broad-ovate, scarious apart from the herbaceous, purplish and sometimes slightly hairy keel. Corolla tube = calyx; lobes 1-1.5 mm diam., broad-ovate or suborbicular, ± mucronulate, reflexing. Stamens glabrous, ± exserted. Style with somewhat curly hairs, well exserted. Capsule 2.5-3 mm long, subglobose to broad-ovoid, mucronate, usually 5-seeded. Seeds mostly 1.2-2 mm long, oblong-elliptic to obovoid, brown, compressed; 1 seed smaller (c. 1 mm long) and more irregular, separated from the others by a horizontal placental outgrowth towards apex.

N.: Wellington area; S.: Ward (Marlborough), Tai Tapu area (Banks Peninsula).

Australia 1838

Occasional in poor, dry pastures and roadsides.

FL Aug-Nov.

P. debilis varies considerably and descriptions from Australian Floras usually differ somewhat from that given here. It is related to the indigenous N.Z. P. raoulii. This also has the ovary with 2 ovules in 1 loculus and 3 in the other and the distinctive fifth seed of P. debilis and resembles it in a number of other ways. However, the lack of the primary taproot and the usually much shorter spike of P. raoulii distinguish it from P. debilis. Plants of P. debilis have been previously referred to P. varia R. Br in N.Z., but have been reidentified as P. debilis (B. G. Briggs, pers. comm.). P. varia is a smaller Australian sp. said to differ from P. debilis by its longer sepals, and by the lf axil tufts of golden brown to reddish brown hairs rather than whitish or pale yellowish brown hairs.