- ≡ Cotula goyenii Petrie, Trans. & Proc. New Zealand Inst. 18: 295 (1886)
- = Cotula goyenii var. pinnatisecta Kirk, Stud. Fl. New Zealand 326 (1899)
A woody perennial herb forming tight mats 1-3 cm thick, in patches up to ca. 1 m wide. Rhizomes packed together, ± horizontal and ascending at tips, obscured by crowded leaves; branches single or 2-3 clustered and diverging, at intervals of 0.5-3.0 cm; living leaves closely imbricate on apical ca. 0.5 cm of each stem; lower parts of stems covered with persistent dead leaves. No short shoots. Roots issuing from lower parts of stems, slender but becoming subwoody, up to 0.5 mm diam. Leaves sessile, palmately divided, curved around stem, 4-6 × 4-5mm; blade ca. 3 mm long, crescent shaped, coriaceous, dark green, with scattered short hairs; lobes us. 7, linear, subterete, in a half-circle with central lobes above shorter lateral lobes, acute to acuminate, cut to top of broad leaf base. Peduncles less or greater than leaves, up to 0.7 cm long, nude or with 1 small bract, pilose. Subdioecious? Heads not or scarcely emergent from mat surface, small, 2-4 mm diam.; surface convex; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries in 2 subequal rows, elliptic or oblong, thin, dark-green with wide, pale ± keeled midrib, glabrous, with wide brown scarious margin, not growing after anthesis. Pistillate plants (?) with heads with 10-15 phyllaries and 20-45 pistillate florets; florets ca. 2.25 mm long, straight, yellow-red, corolla twice as long as wide, with equal teeth. Staminate plants (?) with heads with 8-12 phyllaries, 0 or 1-8 pistillate florets and 10-35 staminate florets. Achenes up to 1.3 × 0.65 mm, ± compressed, biconvex, golden-brown shiny, scarcely wrinkled. Flowers in summer.
[Reproduced from Lloyd (1972, New Zealand J. Bot. 10: 277–372, as Cotula goyenii Petrie) with permission from The Royal Society of New Zealand.]