Flora of New Zealand Series

Australian tauhinu

Shrub or small tree up to 4 m tall. Stems densely tomentose and glandular, with longer straight hairs. Lvs scabrid on upper surface, with dense white tomentum on lower, apetiolate, linear, with revolute margins obscuring most of lower surface, 7-20 × 0.5-1 mm. Corymbs aggregated into ± flat-topped or rounded infls. Outer involucral bracts glabrous or sparsely hairy outside, ± orbicular, transparent, but with milky white lamina, 0.8-1.5 mm long; inner bracts glabrous, elliptic-ovate, erect and usually with milky white lamina, sometimes pink in bud, 2.5-3.5 mm long. Florets c. 4-7 per capitulum; receptacular scales few, narrower than inner bracts, transparent or white only in the erect lamina, ± = corolla. Achenes sparsely hairy, cylindric-obovoid, 0.5-0.8 mm long; pappus barbellate, narrow at apex.

N.: vicinity of Whangarei, Auckland City, Raglan and Ngaruawahia.

S.E. Australia and Tasmania 1969

Waste places, locally common.

In Australia, C. aculeata is quite variable with the lvs of some forms linear-elliptic and up to 5 cm long; such forms have not been collected wild in N.Z. Australian tauhinu has been previously recorded in N.Z. as C. arctuata and C. arcuata.