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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

13. Craspedia, Forst

13. Craspedia, Forst.

Perennial herbs, usually more or less silky or woolly, rarely almost glabrous. Leaves radical or alternate, entire. Heads homo-gamous 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 campanu-late 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.

A small genus of 5 or 6 species, confined to New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania. The New Zealand species has the range of the genus.

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 oblong page 348 or linear-oblong, thin and hyaline. Achene silky. Pappus-hairs plumose, as long as the florets.—A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 245; A. Cunn, Precur. n. 446; Raoul, Choix, 45; Kirk, Students' Fl. 316. C fimbriata, D.C. Prodr. vi. 152; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 131; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 144. C. Richea, Cass. in Dict. Sci. Nat. xi. 353; Benth. Fl. Austral. iii. 579. Staehelina fimbriata, Forst. ex D.C. Prodr. vi. 153.

Var. robusta, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 131.—Stout. Leaves obovate-spa-thulate, subacute, narrowed into a broad flat petiole, sparsely hispid or glabrate, without white cottony margins. Scape leafy. Compound head large, 1–2 in. diam.—C. uniflora var. pedicellata, Kirk, Students' Fl. 317.

Var. minor, Hook. f. l.c.—Small, slender, 6–12 in. high, rarely more. Leaves spathulate, membranous, glabrous or sparsely hispid, sometimes with raised viscid points, usually without white cottony margins. Compound head small, ¼–½ in. diam.—C. viscosa, Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xvi. (1884) 333.

Var. lanata, Hook. f. l.c.—Everywhere clothed with dense shaggy snow-white wool.—C. alpina, Backh. in Hook. Lond. Journ. Bot. vi. (1847) 119; Hook. f. Handb, N.Z. Fl. 144.

North and South Islands, Stewart Island: Abundant from the East Cape and Taupo southwards. Sea-level to 5000 ft. December–February.

A most variable plant. The three varieties described above look very distinct in their extreme forms, but are connected with the ordinary state of the species by numerous intermediates.