Rachelia J.M.Ward & Breitw.

Tufted perennial herb. Rhizomes long, slender, branched. Aerial shoots ascending to decumbent, not rooting at nodes; phloem with dispersed fibres. Leaves imbricate, alternate, simple, entire, sessile, silver-grey, densely lanate. Capitula sessile, clustered, one terminal and the others singly in the axils of the uppermost leaves; capitula heterogamous, discoid. Capitulum at first conical, becoming narrowly cylindrical when open. Involucral bracts continuously variable from outer to inner bracts, in several series, inner norrowly rhombic; lamina brown; stereome not fenestrated. Receptacle very narrow, epaleate. Florets approximately 10, female filiform, hermaphrodite tubular, more or less equal in number. Corolla of both female and hermaphrodite florets pale green, translucent, flushed with red below lobes; lobes of hermaphrodite florets with both capitate and long-tailed hairs. Anthers tailed; tails much longer than filament collar. Pollen white, echinate; sexine two-layered. Style arms truncate, with papillae forming a dense terminal tuft but not extending down style arms as dorsal sweeping hairs. Cypsela fusiform, densely papillose, without duplex hairs, without carpopodium; pappus hairs slender, partially biseriate, caducous, cohering in groups, tips usually slightly thickened, apical cells obtuse. Monotypic.

[Reproduced from Ward et al. (1997, New Zealand J. Bot. 35: 145–154) with permission from The Royal Society of New Zealand.]