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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

7. Vittadinia, A. Rich

7. Vittadinia, A. Rich.

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. Receptacle 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.

A small genus of 8 or 10 species, found in Australia, Tasmania, New-Caledonia, the Sandwich Islands, and extra-tropical South America.

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 hispid-pubescent 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.

North and South Islands: From the Great Barrier Island and Wha-ngarei southwards, but local to the north of the East Cape. Sea-level to 3000 ft. November–January.

Also found in Australia and Tasmania, where it runs into numerous varieties, some of which differ widely from the type, and may prove to be distinct species. Of these var. dissecta (Benth. Fl. Austral. iii. 491) has become naturalised near Nelson. It can be distinguished by the leaves being pin-natifid, with the segments again lobed, and by the purple ray-florets. Two other closely allied forms (var. linearis and var. erecta, Kirk, "Students' Flora," 295), with linear or linear-spathulate leaves ¾–1½ in. long and purple rays, have established themselves in the interior of Otago and elsewhere in the South Island.

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