Flora of New Zealand Series

slender celery

Erect terrestrial herb. Stems hollow, slightly grooved, striate, up to 50 cm high. Basal lvs 3-4-pinnate or ternate, petiolate; ultimate segments linear to filiform, entire, 2-15 mm long; stem lvs similar to basal but 2-3-ternate, shortly petiolate. Umbels 1-3 cm diam., simple or compound; rays 1-3-(4). Fls 3-10, white, c. 1 mm diam. Fr. broadly ovoid, 1.5-3 mm long, dark brown; ribs broad, thickened, pale brown.

N.: common in Northland, also Great Barrier Id, Auckland City, coastal Gisborne Province, vicinity of Feilding and Palmerston North, and Lake Wairarapa; S.: collected twice from Marlborough; K.

N., C., and S. America 1869

Waste places, grasslands, riverbeds, often in coastal or wet situations.

FL Jul-Jan.

Possibly poisonous (Connor 1977).

Slender celery is a small feathery annual, well established in the warmer parts of the North Id. It has usually been known in N.Z. as Apium leptophyllum or A. tenuifolium.