Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: uncertain. Hooker (loc. cit.) gives: "Northern and Middle Islands; on mountains, etc., Colenso, Bidwill"; in Handbk N.Z. Fl. 1864, 148 : "Northern Island: gravelly beds of rivers, Wairarapa, Ruamahanga, Palliser Bay, etc., Colenso. Middle Island: Kowai river, alt. 1-2000 ft., Haast". Type: K, "N.Z. Colenso 1863". This fits description and illustration and is selected as the lectotype.

Stems slender, creeping and rooting, laxly to densely branched; branchlets ascending; forming flat patches or mats up to c. 1 m. diam. Lvs laxly to closely imbricate, spreading, up to 5 × 2 mm., sublanceolate, tapering from base to acute or apiculate apex; basal portion appressed, scarious, 1-nerved; apical portion sparsely clad in appressed whitish tomentum; subcapitular lvs sts obtuse. Capitula up to 6 mm. diam.; inner phyll. c. 4 mm. long, glab., linear-oblong to ovate, obtuse or retuse to subacute, margins broad, hyaline, tips ± darkened, not radiate. Florets 10-20, c. half ♀. Achenes c. 1 mm. long, glab. to puberulous; pappus-hairs c. 4 mm. long, very slender, not thickened at tips, with very obscure papillae.

DIST.: N., S. Lowland to montane riverbeds from lat. 37° southwards.