Flora of New Zealand Series

Erect shrub up to 2.5 m tall; primocanes erect, dark purple, with rounded angles and deeply furrowed between, with numerous subsessile glands, otherwise almost glabrous to moderately clothed in simple hairs; armature of few, stout, ± erect prickles on angles. Young stems moderately hairy and glandular. Leaflets 5, sparsely pilose on upper surface, pilose on veins but not tomentose on lower surface, serrate or coarsely serrate; terminal leaflet lamina elliptic to elliptic-ovate, acuminate, up to 110 × 75 mm, with petiolule 1/4-⅖ length of lamina. Stipules linear-lanceolate. Infl. densely hairy, with subsessile and some short-stalked glands. Sepals long-acuminate, moderately pilose, but tomentose only on margins and within, without pricklets. Petals rounded, ± crinkled, white. Anthers glabrous.

N.: N. Auckland (Pakaraka and Otakairangi); S.: Westland (Paringa R. and Potters Creek between Paringa R. and Lake Paringa).

U.S.A. 1988

Open scrub in forest clearings, roadsides.

FL Dec.

This blackberry is similar to R. ostryifolius in most characters but differs in often being taller, having fewer, shorter (up to c. 6 mm) prickles on the primocanes, in lacking any tomentum on the lower surface of the mature (usually slightly larger) primocane lvs, in having few deflexed rather than many distinctly falcate infl. prickles, in having some short-stalked glands in the infl. and in the long-acuminate sepals. It has been preliminarily identified as R. mollior, a sp. closely related to R. ostryifolius and R. argutus and said to differ from them in N. America by the near-cylindric racemes and the thickened primocane leaflets with the conspicuous secondary veins impressed above and prominent beneath.