Flora of New Zealand Series

Slender erect shrub to 3 m high. Adult and juvenile lvs petiolate; lamina 20-70 × 10-30 mm, ± elliptic; upper surface glabrous except for scattered simple hairs around sunken midrib; lower surface with fine grey stellate tomentum and scattered simple or large stellate hairs on veins; margins entire, slightly revolute; stipules 4-5 mm long, deciduous. Infl. an open, much-branched, terminal corymb. Calyx reflexed, pale greenish; tube with scattered long, white, simple hairs until after anthesis. Petals cream; limb broad. Anthers oblong. Ovary with stellate hairs at apex, wholly immersed in calyx tube at anthesis, c. 1/2 immersed at fruiting. Fr. cocci opening by opercula occupying c. 1/2 of their inner faces.

N.: Rodney County (N. Auckland), Firth of Thames.

Endemic.

Clay banks and slopes.

FL Sep-Oct.

P. hamiltonii is closely related to P. kumeraho, but is distinguished by the laxer infls of cream fls.