Celmisia verbascifolia Hook.f.

Woody-based herb with short branchlets arising from a multicipital stock, usually just below the soil surface; living leaves in rosettes at the tips of branchlets; the whole plant forming a mat of rosettes. Leaf sheaths densely imbricate and compacted into a pseudostem. Leaf lamina (4)-8-19- (30) × (1.2)-2-4-(7) cm, often flaccid, leaves usually at first erect, becoming decumbent with age, elliptic, oblong, or occasionally obovate; upper surface sometimes obscurely sulcate, concolorous, paleto mid-green, often densely yellow-tomentose when young but hairs usually deciduous; lower surface densely covered in a tomentum of cream to buff hairs; tip acute; margins entire, flat, with a very narrow rim of hairs slightly darker than those of lower surface; base obliquely cuneate to rounded, occasionally truncate; petiole short, up to or rarely exceeding lamina length, occasionally longer, green or purple, clad in floccose, whitish hairs. Scape purple, clad in whitish tomentum, up to 40 cm long; bracts numerous, erect, linear sometimes leaf-like; monocephalous. Capitula up to 6 cm diam. Phyllaries in several series, linear-subulate, erect, glabrate to silky tomentose. Ray florets 70-80, ligulate, the limb linear-lanceolate, white. Disc florets c. 130- 170, funneliform, yellow; tube with eglandular, biseriate hairs. Achene fusiform-cylindric, ribbed, 4- 5 mm long, glabrous or with scattered bifid hairs. Pappus unequal, c. 6 mm long, of c. 20-30 bristles.

[Reproduced from Given (1984, New Zealand J. Bot. 22: 139–158) with permission from The Royal Society of New Zealand.]