Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: "Mountains flanking the Wairau Valley, Nelson, alt. 3000-4500 feet." Type: A, "Red Hills, Wairau Valley alt. 4500 ft., Jan. 1882, T.F.C."

"Small, dark-green, rather thick and fleshy, aromatic, sparingly pilose. Stems prostrate, branched, ascending at the tips. Leaves alternate, 1/2-11/2 in. long, narrow-linear or linear-spathulate, obtuse, gradually narrowed to the sheathing base, quite entire, coriaceous, gland-dotted. Peduncles 2-4 in. long, slender, terminal, with 4-8 small linear bracts. Heads unisexual, 1/4-⅓ in. diam.; involucral bracts in about 3 series, linear-oblong, obtuse, with purplish scarious margins. Receptacle convex. Florets studded with transparent glands; female corolla swollen at the base, obscurely tetragonous, narrowed above, minutely 4-toothed; corolla of the males smaller and more slender, narrow funnel-shaped, 4-lobed. Achene linear-obovoid, compressed."

DIST.: S. Higher montane to subalpine open grassland, fellfield, rocky places: Raglan Range, Red Hills, Chine Peak.

The above description is quoted from Cheeseman, Man. N.Z. Fl. 1925, 999. Cheeseman remarks: "Distinguished from C. pyrethrifolia by the entire leaves. In outward appearance it closely resembles Abrotanella linearis. Abundant in the locality in which it was originally discovered, but so far has not been found elsewhere." In the field I have seen only barren specimens―the lvs are occ. minutely forked, ± 15 × 1 mm.