Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: foothills of Mount St. Mary, near Kurow. Type: BD 45804 (G. S. 88) Simpson.

Robust shrub with stout main stem arising from stout taproot up to c. 2 cm. diam. Branches sprawling, up to 6 dm. long. Branchlets compressed, plano-convex, (2)-4-5 mm. wide, deeply grooved, at first ± pilose, rounded at apex. Lvs of young plants 1-3-foliolate, lflts c. 6 mm. long, obcordate-cuneate, pilose. Infl. of 1-3, 4-6-fld racemes on short pilose peduncles. Fls c. 6 × 5 mm.; calyx c. 2 × 1 mm., teeth triangular; standard white, purple-veined, with purple basal blotch; keel greenish, purple-veined, auricles rounded; wings whitish, with greenish basal blotch, auricles bluntly pointed. Ovary glab. Pods (10)-15 × 3-4 mm., obliquely narrow-oblong, dark brown to black; beak stout, curved, ± 1 mm. long. Seeds c. 6, pale yellowish, black-spotted, reniform.

DIST.: S. Lowland to lower montane dry ground and river-terraces in drainage area of Waitaki Valley.

Simpson remarks: "A peculiar plant, first collected as a prostrate shrub from sandstone at Mt. St. Mary, Waitaki Valley, by the Rev. J. E. Holloway, but young plants erect when propagated in his experimental garden at the Otago University Museum. Young erect plants are quite unlike the procumbent, leafless adult." As I know it in the field the plant is an ungainly sprawler.