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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
22. Microseris, Don
22. Microseris, Don.
Annual or perennial glabrous herbs. Leaves chiefly radical, entire or toothed or pinnatifid. Scapes long, leafless, single-headed. Heads homogamous. Involucre oblong or cylindric; bracts in about 2 series, with a few short imbricate ones below. Receptacle flat, without scales. Florets all ligulate, yellow. Achenes narrow, attenuate at the base, cylindrical, ribbed. Pappus of few or several linear flat scales tapering into simple or plumose bristles.
A genus of 16 or 18 species, all western North American except one from Chili and another from Australia and New Zealand.
| 1. | M. Forsteri, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 151.—A perfectly glabrous perennial herb; roots thick and fleshy, almost tuberous, page 385juice milky. Leaves all radical, very variable in size, 2–10 in. long, narrow-linear to lanceolate, flaccid, entire or irregularly toothed or pinnatifid; the lobes narrow, distant, spreading. Scapes usually exceeding the leaves, rarely shorter, sometimes puberulous above. Heads solitary, ½–⅔ in. long; involucral bracts linear, acute, rather fleshy, with membranous borders. Florets longer than the involucre. Achenes linear, deeply grooved. Pappus - bristles slightly dilated below, serrulate or shortly plumose.—Fl. Tasm, i. 226, t. 66; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 164; Benth. Fl. Austral. iii. 676; Kirk, Students' Fl. 356. M. pygmæa, Raoul, Choix, 45 (not of Hook, and Arn.). Scorzonera scapigera, Forst. Proir. 534; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 430.
North and South Islands: From the Middle Waikato and Rotorua southwards; plentiful. Sea-level to 4000 ft. December–February. |