Flora of New Zealand Series

sourgrass

Clump-forming, hairy perennial; rhizomes short, thick, fleshy, sometimes with short offsets, rough from numerous lf base scars. Lvs 3-foliolate, in basal rosettes. Petiole (3)-7-30 cm long, hairy or nearly glabrous; stipular wing inconspicuous, membranous, hairy. Lamina of leaflets often unequal, sessile, usually 8-35-(55) × 15-(60) mm, broadly obcordate with narrow sinus to ⅓ lamina, with appressed hairs above and below, with basal tuft of hairs; calli orange and forming marginal band; lobes 2, rounded. Infl. to c. 35 cm tall, glabrate, a terminal cyme or panicle of (4)-7-35 fls; pedicels ± deflexed at first, later erect, very variable in length, with antrorse hairs. Bracts at base of pedicels 2-2.5 mm long, lanceolate to ovate, with 2 elongated orange calli. Sepals 3-5 mm long, ovate-elliptic or elliptic, with appressed hairs; calli 2, orange, terminal. Petals 9-16 mm long, oblique-obovate to oblong, usually rose above with darker veins and paler pink with band of appressed hairs outside, rarely white. Stamens in 2 whorls; filaments hairy, dilated and sometimes toothed in lower part, those of longest whorl 2-3 mm long. Styles usually much > longer stamen whorl at anthesis (if petals white, then much < longer stamen whorl), densely hairy. Capsule not seen.

N.; S.: around towns and cities throughout, especially in the lower part of the North Id, Nelson and the E. coastal areas of the South Id; St.: Halfmoon Bay. Usually waste places, roadside banks, grassy places, and open ground near habitations

E. South America 1940

cultivation escape and long-persistent discard.

FL Jul-May.

O. articulata is sometimes confused with the bulbil-producing O. debilis and O. latifolia, but has no true bulbils and is not a bad weed. A white-flowered form of O. articulata has been collected occasionally wild in Wellington and on Banks Peninsula; the petals are hairy as in the common form but the hairs are inconspicuous because they are also white. Further, unlike the pink form the style is intermediate in length between the stamen whorls.

Another form in N.Z. appears to correspond to var. hirsuta Progel [cf. Cabrera, A. L., Flora de la Provincia de Buenos Aires 4(4a): 9 (1965)]. The N.Z. plants are mainly distinguished from the common N.Z. form by the more elongated rhizomes, generally longer petioles, filaments of longer stamens c. 5 mm long, and very short curved styles < shorter stamen whorl. This plant grows in the Karikari Peninsula and near Mangonui (N. Auckland). O. articulata has previously been known in N.Z. as O. floribunda and O. rubra.