Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Hector Mountains, east of Lake Wakatipu, 6000 ft. Type: W, 4736, D. Petrie, Feb. 1890.

Many-branched tufted perennial forming compact rounded cushion with rootlets on branches amongst old lvs. Vegetative stems to 5 cm. long, the ultimate twigs crowded, ± erect, closely covered with imbricate to patent lvs. Lvs 5 × 3 mm., very broadly spathulate, lamina broad and obtuse or almost emarginate above, scarcely narrowed to the broadly winged petiole; hairs short, stiff, ± appressed, rather numerous on both surfaces of lamina of young lvs but soon falling so that most of plant is glab. Flowering lateral branches very short, almost hidden amongst lvs, each with a few broad elliptic subacute stem-lvs surrounding the solitary terminal almost sessile fl.; hairs as on other young lvs. Calyx 2-3 mm. long, lobes c. 1/2 length, narrow, acute, with rather sparse cover of appressed hairs. Corolla apparently white, c. 5 mm. diam., tube ± cylindric, 4 mm. long, lobes c. 2 × 1·5 mm., oblong; filaments short, anthers c. 1 mm. long, almost entirely above corolla-scales but lower extremity apparently us. included in tube; style much > calyx, stigma capitate. Nutlets not seen.

DIST.: S. Western Otago.

M. glabrescens resembles M. uniflora and M. pulvinaris in its solitary terminal fls; lf-shape approaches that of M. pulvinaris while hairs are like those of M. uniflora except that they are early deciduous. A special point of interest lies in the position of the anthers which does not place the sp. neatly in either section of the genus, but suggests Exarrhena rather strongly; nevertheless until more material is available it seems best to give weight to other characters and list the new sp. next to M. pulvinaris.

The above description is based on half a dozen tufts, probably all parts of a single cushion, from a Petrie folder that contained also a similar number of twigs of M. Pulvinaris. The sp. would hardly be proposed without supporting material, also collected by Petrie, from "Mts opp. East side of Mt. Aspiring, C.4500 ft. 1045b to Kew", and represented by a sheet each in the Petrie (W 4738) and Kirk (W 4739) herbaria. Although there are no corollas the flowering branchlets with fruiting calyces match the Hector Mts specimens exactly and the only difference lies in the larger size of the vegetative parts; the older stems where lvs have fallen off are up to 5 cm. long, up to 3 mm. diam. and almost woody; lvs are mostly at least 4 mm. across and patent to recurved; slightly immature nutlets are 1·5 mm. long.