Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: North Cape. Type: BD 18169. L. H. Millener, 11.12.1934.

Low-growing, straggling or erect shrub, occ. to 2 m. tall. Lvs 14-45 × 8-15 mm., size increasing with shade, broad-elliptic to elliptic-oblong, subacute, very slightly toothed towards tip, margins not recurved, petiole to 5 mm. long; upper surface glab. except on extreme margin; lower surface fully clothed with white sessile stellate hairs with many scattered ferruginous stalked stellate hairs which also cover the prominent veins, us. thickly. Infl. of small clusters, us. lateral and terminal on elongated ± lfless branchlets that are shed after fr.-fall; bracts red-brown, all narrow or laciniate, mealy-hairy; buds flat-topped, dark; pedicels c. 1 mm. long. Fls brownish, c. 4 mm. diam.; calyx-tube mealy with stellate hairs; sepals c. 1*5 mm. long; petals 0; style divided to > 1/2 length; capsule ⅔ immersed in calyx-tube bearing persistent sepals; operculum occupying most of inner face of coccus; seeds c. 1·6 × 1.1 mm., often only one developing per fl., dark brown, smooth but not shining.

DIST.: N. North Cape Peninsula, Scott's Point, Maunganui Bluff, Whangarei Heads (Aubrey's Mountain, P. Sounders, 1956; summit of Mt. Manaia). In short scrub.

FL. 10-11. FT. 11-1.

The type of P. oraria (C. Stuart, Van Diemensland, ? in Nat. Herb. Vict., Melbourne) has not been seen, but N.Z. specimens are comparable with some from islands of Bass Strait and one collected by Mueller ("P. oraria, Australia felix"). N.Z. plants have proportionately narrower more elliptic lvs, stouter infl.-axes, shorter pedicels, smaller, darker fls and cocci more orbicular in outline with operculum occupying much more of the inner face.

N.Z. plants of this kind were placed first with P. edgerleyi (Hook. f. Handbk N.Z. Fl. 1864, 43), then with P. rugosa (Cheesem. Man. N.Z. Fl. 1925, 554); they resemble the former in frequently low-growing habit, the latter in smooth, not scabrid upper lf-surface, but in fl., fr., and infl. they are quite distinct from both and much closer to P. apetala.

A specimen in W is mounted with P. rugosa on a sheet labelled "Tapu-Thames Road, Coast of Firth of Thames, D. Petrie, Oct. 1897". No other specimen is known from south of Whangarei and the label probably refers only to the P. rugosa.

(P. ovaria, the original published spelling, is considered at Kew to be an orthographic error.)