Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/387

Cassinia.] long, linear or narrow linear-spathulate or linear-obovate, obtuse, narrowed to the base, coriaceous, glabrous and subviscid above, beneath clothed with fulvous tomentum; margins recurved. Heads very numerous, in terminal rounded corymbs, shortly pedicelled, cylindrical, ⅕ in. long; involucral bracts few, in several series; outer shorcer, pubescent or glabrate; inner with short white radiating tips. Scales among the florets wanting or 1 or 2 only. Florets few, 5–8. Achene pubescent. Pappus-hairs few, thickened above.—Kirk, Students Fl. 316. C. leptophylla var. γ, ''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 133.

Perennial herbs, usually more or less silky or woolly, rarely almost glabrous. Leaves radical or alternate, entire. Heads homogamous and discoid, small, numerous, sessile or nearly so, crowded together into a dense globose or ovoid glomerule or compound head, which is surrounded by scarious bracts forming a general involucre. Involucre of the partial heads of several scarious hyaline bracts, without radiating tips. Receptacle small, with hyaline scales similar to the involucral bracts at the base of each floret. Florets 3–8, all hermaphrodite, tubular with a campanulate 5-toothed limb. Anthers sagittate at the base, more or less distinctly tailed. Style-branches almost terete, truncate at the tip. Achenes small, compressed, silky. Pappus-hairs in 1 series, plumose, free or connate at the base.

1. C. uniflora, Forst. Prodr. n. 306.—A very variable stout or slender unbranched herb 4–20 in. high, silky, cottony or woolly, or nearly glabrous. Leaves nearly all radical, 1–8 in. long, obovate-oblong to spathulate or spathulate-lanceolate, obtuse, narrowed into a short broad petiole, usually but not always fringed with white tomentum, often slightly viscid; cauline leaves smaller and narrower, the upper reduced to distant bracts. Compound head or glomerule solitary, terminal, ¼–2 in. diam., globose or nearly so; bracts 4–10, ovate, herbaceous with a scarious margin, shorter than the head. Partial heads 3–8-flowered; involucral bracts