Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/359

Celmisia.]

Branched perennial herbs or small undershrubs, usually woody at the base. Leaves alternate, entire or toothed or lobed. Heads rather small, solitary and terminating the branches or forming loose terminal corymbs. Involucre hemispherical or campanulate; bracts in few series, imbricate, narrow, acute; margins scarious. Eeceptacle pitted, without scales. Ray-florets all female, numerous, crowded, ligulate. Disc-florets hermaphrodite, tubular, dilated upwards, usually 5-lobed. Anthers obtuse at the base. Style-branches narrow, somewhat flattened, with subulate tips. Achenes usually narrow, compressed, with or without ribs. Pappus copious, of numerous unequal capillary bristles.

1. V. australis, ''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel.'' 251.—A small much-branched herb 4–12 in. high, hard and woody at the base; branches numerous, decumbent or suberect, usually more or less hispidpubescent or glandular, rarely almost glabrous. Leaves ¼–½ in. long, obovate-spathulate to linear-cuneate, entire or 3–5-toothed or -lobed at the tip, narrowed into a broad flat petiole, hispid or pubescent. Heads solitary on short peduncles terminating the branches; involucral bracts few, in 2–3 series, linear-subulate, acute, erect, hispid or pubescent. Ray-florets in one series, usually exceeding the pappus, narrow, white, spreading. Disc-florets narrow, slender, longer than the involucre. Achene linear, compressed, obtuse at the tip, narrowed to the base, pubescent, usually with 5–8 striæ on each face. Pappus exceeding the achene.—''A. Cunn. Precur. n. 441; Raoul, Choix, 45; Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 136; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' iii. 490; Kirk, Students Fl. 294. Eurybiopsis australis, ''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 125.