Class
Order
Family
Genus
Classification
Nomenclature
Scientific Name:
Leptinella serrulata (D.G.Lloyd) D.G.Lloyd & C.J.Webb, New Zealand J. Bot. 25: 103 (1987)
Synonymy:
- ≡ Cotula serrulata D.G.Lloyd, New Zealand J. Bot. 10: 332-334 (1972)
Description
A small perennial herb with tufts of leaves in grassland turfs. 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, 0.5-1.5 cm apart. Short shoots, growing upwards from the rhizome, with 3-6 tufted leaves at the apex. Roots slender and weak, up to 0.4 mm diam. Leaves 1-pinnatifid, 0.7- 2.0 × 0.2-0.6 cm; blade 0.6-2.0 cm, elliptic or obovate, submembranous, green, or glaucous, older leaves often diffusely covered with brown pigment, moderately to densely silver-hairy, midrib raised along most of vertical surface but sts obscured by hairs; pinnae 8-20 pairs, closeset and us. overlapping, cut to rhachis, broadly obovate; teeth on all or most pinnae, up to 6 per pinna, on distal margins, cut ca. ½ across pinna, close-set, oblong, obtuse, sts obscured by hairs. Peduncles us. borne on short shoots, ca. equal to leaves, 1-3 cm, nude or with 1 simple bract, villous. Dioecious. Pistillate heads 2-4 mm, up to 8 mm in fruit; surface convex; involucre urceolate; phyllaries 20-40 in 3 or more unequal rows, broadly elliptic, green, villous, with wide often brown-tipped scarious margin; inner phyllaries grow after anthesis to enclose subglobose fruiting head; florets 30-95, ca. 2.0 mm long, curved, yellow-green, corolla slightly longer than wide, with unequal teeth. Staminate heads 3-5 mm diam.; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries 8-15 in 1-2 subequal rows, not growing after anthesis; florets slightly more numerous. Achenes up to 1.4 × 0.8 mm, slightly compressed, in section almost round, with a pale unwrinkled papery surface turning brown and smooth. Flowers in spring.
[Reproduced from Lloyd (1972, New Zealand J. Bot. 10: 277–372, as Cotula serrulata D.G.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. [Declining]
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.
