Class
Order
Family
Genus
Classification
Nomenclature
Scientific Name:
Leptinella calcarea (D.G.Lloyd) D.G.Lloyd & C.J.Webb, New Zealand J. Bot. 25: 103 (1987)
Synonymy:
- ≡ Cotula calcarea D.G.Lloyd, New Zealand J. Bot. 10: 334-336 (1972)
Description
A perennial herb with tufted leaves in loose open mats. Rhizomes us. well buried, pale, wiry, and glabrous; branches uncommon, us. single at flowering nodes; leaves spirally arranged reduced scales lacking a blade and petiole, 0.5-2.0 cm apart. Short shoots growing upwards from the rhizome, with 3-8 tufted leaves at the apex. Roots slender and weak, up to 0.5 mm diam. Leaves 1-pinnatifid, 1-4 × 0.3-0.6 cm; blade 1-4 cm, oblong to elliptic, thick, subfleshy, and stiff, yellow-green, sts with brown pigment on proximal lobes, with a moderate to dense cover of long woolly hairs, midrib prominently raised along the ventral surface; pinnae 12-20 pairs, close-set and us. overlapping, cut to rhachis, broadly elliptic; teeth on most pinnae, up to 6 per pinna, on distal margins, cut ca. 1/3 across pinna, close-set, narrowly triangular, obtuse. Peduncle us. borne on short shoots, ca. equal to leaves, 1-4 cm, nude or with 1 simple bract, villous. Dioecious. Pistillate heads 3-5 mm diam., up to 10 mm in fruit; surface convex; involucre urceolate; phyllaries 20-40 in 3 or more unequal rows, broadly elliptic, green, ± villous, with a wide brown-tipped scarious margin; inner phyllaries grow after anthesis to enclose developing fruit; at maturity phyllaries bend outwards to partly expose fruit; florets 25-120, ca. 2.0 mm long, curved, yellow-green; corolla slightly longer than wide, with unequal teeth. Staminate heads 4—6 mm diam.; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries 8-15 in 1-2 subequal rows, not growing after anthesis; florets slightly more numerous. Achenes up to 1.6 × 0.8 mm, slightly compressed, in section almost round or irregularly angled, with a pale unwrinkled papery surface turning brown and smooth. Probably flowers in spring.
[Reproduced from Lloyd (1972, New Zealand J. Bot. 10: 277–372, as Cotula calcarea Lloyd) with permission from The Royal Society of New Zealand.]
Biostatus
Indigenous (Endemic)
Bibliography
de Lange, P.J.; Norton, D.A.; Courtney, S.P.; Heenan, P.B.; Barkla, J.W.; Cameron, E.K.; Hitchmough, R.; Townsend, A.J. 2009: Threatened and uncommon plants of New Zealand (2008 revision). New Zealand Journal of Botany 47: 61–96. [Naturally uncommon]
de Lange, P.J.; Norton, D.A.; Heenan, P.B.; Courtney, S.P.; Molloy, B.P.J.; Ogle, C.C.; Rance, B.D. 2004: Threatened and uncommon plants of New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Botany 42(1): 45–76.
de Lange, P.J.; Rolfe, J.R.; Barkla J.W.; Courtney, S.P.; Champion, P.D.; Perrie, L.R.; Beadel, S.N.; Ford, K.A.; Breitwieser, I.; Schönberger, I.; Hindmarsh-Walls, R.; Heenan, P.B.; Ladley, K. 2018: Conservation status of New Zealand indigenous vascular plants, 2017. New Zealand Threat Classification Series. No. 22. [Naturally Uncommon]
de Lange, P.J.; Rolfe, J.R.; Champion, P.D.; Courtney, S.P.; Heenan, P.B.; Barkla, J.W.; Cameron, E.K.; Norton, D.A.; Hitchmough, R.A. 2013: Conservation status of New Zealand indigenous vascular plants, 2012. New Zealand Threat Classification Series 3. Department of Conservation, Wellington. [Naturally Uncommon]
Lloyd, D.G. 1972: A revision of the New Zealand, Subantarctic, and South American species of Cotula, section Leptinella. New Zealand Journal of Botany 10: 277–372.
Lloyd, D.G.; Webb, C. J. 1987: The reinstatement of Leptinella at generic rank, and the status of the 'Cotuleae' (Asteraceae, Anthemideae). New Zealand Journal of Botany 25: 99–105.
