Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/335

Olearia.]

Tall handsome silky robust perennial herbs. Leaves mostly radical, large, entire, many-nerved. Heads large, racemed at the top of the stem. Involucre broadly campanulate or hemispherical; bracts in 2–3 series, herbaceous. Receptacle flat, pitted. Ray-florets female, ligulate, in 1–3 series; ligule long or short. Disc-florets many, regular, tubular, campanulate at the mouth, 4–5-toothed. Anthers shortly and obtusely auricled at the base. Style-branches of the disc-florets flattened, with lanceolate tips. Achenes compressed, striated, densely setose. Pappus-hairs in 2–3 series, copious, rigid, scabrid, unequal.

1. P. speciosum, Hook. f. Fl. Antarct. i. 31, t. 22, 23.—Leaves chiefly radical, spreading horizontally all round the base of the stem, 6–18 in. long, 4–10 in. broad, broadly ovate or obovate, sessile by a broad base, thick and coriaceous, quite entire, furnished with 15–20 stout longitudinal parallel ribs, villous and tomentose beneath, above slightly setose, with the bristles more or less mixed with moniliform hairs. Cauline leaves few, oblong-lanceolate. Flowering-stems several, 1½–3 ft. high, ending in a raceme of 8–20 heads; bracts numerous, linear. Heads 1½–2½ in. diam.; disc-florets dark-purple; ray-florets with a conspicuous ligule, light-purple or almost whitish. Achenes densely silky-strigose. Pappus-hairs not thickened at the tips.—''Handb. N.Z. Fl. 129; Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst. [[../Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute/Volume 23/Article 47#433|xxiii. (1891) 433; Students Fl.'' 211.

2. P. criniferum, Hook. f. Fl. Antarct. i. 32, t. 24, 25.—Radical leaves variable in size and shape, 1–4 ft. long, 4–12 in. broad, orbicular-ovate or broadly oblong to ovate-lanceolate or obovate-lanceolate, acute, narrowed into a sheathing petiole of variable length, firm but membranous, clothed with thin white tomentum