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Woody-based perennial herb arising from a multicipital stock and forming small to large mats up to 1 m diameter. Leaf lamina linear, rigid, often curved; current season's leaves soon becoming reflexed; 4-12 cm × 1.3-3.8 mm; upper surface corrugated, clad in persistent silvery pellicle; lower surface clad in cream appressed tomentum; margins entire, recurved but not right to midrib; tip acute and usually acicular with short hairs. Leaf sheath up to 3.5(-5) cm long, membranous, greenish or occasionally reddish, clad in a pellicle. Scape 10-15 cm × c. 3 mm; bracts numerous, up to 3.5 cm long, densely white tomentose. Involucral bracts erect, linear-subulate, acute, up to 15 mm long, silvery- grey with white arachnoid hairs, venation simple. Receptacle obconic, surface alveolate. Ray florets up to 2 cm long, limb narrow, linear-lanceolate and glabrous, tube narrow and glabrous. In disc florets, tube gradually narrowed from apex to base, glabrous; stamen tip acute, anther tails short; style bifid, arms differentiated into a lower paralled- sided papillose portion about equal to the triangular appendage which bears short collecting hairs. Pappus bristles unequal, c. 30-35 in number, 5-6 mm long with closely spaced, short teeth. Achenes 3-4.5 mm long, fusiform, ribbed, glabrous.
[Reproduced from Lee & Given (1984, New Zealand J. Bot. 22: 585–592) with permission from The Royal Society of New Zealand.]