Flora of New Zealand Series

fluellen

Annual or sometimes perennial. Stems much-branched and sometimes mat-forming, pilose, often densely so. Lvs petiolate, usually shortly so. Lamina to 4 × 2 cm, but often < 10 × 7 mm, ovate and always at least some hastate, sometimes only 1 side lobed, ± glandular-hairy; base cordate to truncate; apex obtuse and mucronate, acute or short-acuminate, less often rounded. Fls solitary or in axillary racemes. Pedicels long, slender, pilose throughout or only towards apex. Calyx 3-5 mm long, somewhat accrescent, hairy; lobes = or > tube, lanceolate to ovate, short-acuminate. Corolla 10-13 mm long including spur (in fresh specimens), pale yellow with purplish upper lip; spur straight or nearly so. Capsule 3-4 mm long. Seeds c. 1 mm long, broad-ellipsoid, strongly alveolate.

N.; S.: many districts, especially in Nelson and Blenheim areas.

Europe, W. Asia, N. Africa, Macaronesia 1867

Usually among crops, also other modified open habitats.

FL Nov-Apr.

A fl. of fluellen is illustrated in Fig. 108. Two subspp. are recognised in the N. Hemisphere, but N.Z. plants show a range of characters embracing subsp. crinita (Mabille) Greuter and subsp. elatine, as for example in the hairiness of the pedicels and lf shape. Therefore the subspp. are not treated formally here. However, subsp. crinita has been recorded in N.Z. as Linaria sieberi Reichb. on the basis of a specimen with more rounded lvs, and the sp. has been known as L. elatine.