Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Rangitaiki River near Galatea. Type: K, J. C. Bidwill, 1842.

Erect, up to c. 2m. tall; branches rather slender, subfastigiate, bark blackish grey; branchlets lfy at tips only, bark reddish brown. Lvs imbricate, rigid, coriac., erect or ascending. Sheath (2)-3-4 × (1)-2-3 mm., passing by rounded to subtruncate ciliolate shoulder to linear-subulate lamina (12)-20-30 × ± 1 mm.; margins minutely serrulate, apex triquetrous, pungent. Infl. of 2-6-fld racemes 6-9 mm. long, terminal on lateral branchlets, often clustered (fls sts solitary). Bracts light-margined, persistent, broad-ovate, ciliolate, tapering to subulate tip, lower up to c. 1 cm. long. Sepals broad-ovate, acute to acuminate, slighty > corolla-tube. Corolla-tube narrow-campanulate, c, 2-3 mm. long; lobes white, broad, c. 3 mm. long, ovate-oblong, obtuse, recurved; anthers included or nearly so.

DIST.: N. Lowland to montane shrubland, fernland, grassland from lat 37º to Ruahine Range.

Oliver (loc. cit. 1929, 691) notes: "Growing in warm ground in Leptospermum ericoides association at Waiotapu this species tends to lose its slender form, the branches spreading out into a more bushy form. The branches are pale grey, perhaps caused partly by a deposit of sulphur, and the leaves instead of being strict are spreding and flexuose."

Colenso (T.N.Z.I. 28, 1896, 603) based his D. angustifolium on specimens from "Ruahine Mountain-range: Mr. H. Hill; 1895". His description includes: "Shrub erect, much branched, fastigiate, slender . . . branches numerous, subfascicled, very slender, almost filiform, 1/30 in. diameter, 5 in.-7 in. long . . . Leaves numerous . . . 3-9 lines long, 1/40 in. wide, tips obtuse with a callous mucro . . . Flowers few, 2-3 together, terminal on small stout lateral branchlets . . . Corolla red".