- ≡ Cotula plumosa (Hook.f.) Hook.f., Handb. New Zealand Fl. 141 (1864)
A highly plastic, shortly creeping perennial herb. Rhizomes on soil surface, us. very thick, up to 1 cm diam., green, hard, glabrous to thinly but uniformly covered with tangled woolly hairs; branches single or clustered around flowering nodes, sts repeated several nodes later; leaves 4-8 tufted at the apex, older ones scattered up to 4 cm apart. Short shoots us. absent. Roots largely confined to older stems, up to 1 mm diam. Leaves very variable in size and divisions, 1-2 pinnatifid, 5-20 × 1-6 cm; blade 4-12 cm long, elliptic or broadly so, soft, light green, glabrous to moderately villous especially along rhachis, midrib not raised on ventral surface; pinnae 5-20 pairs, slightly overlapping, cut to rhachis, elliptic; secondary pinnae up to 13 per pinna, most on distal margin, cut to rhachis, simple and narrowly triangular or divided and elliptic; tertiary pinnae 0-6, mostly on outer margin of secondary pinnae, oblong or narrowly triangular; final divisions acute. Peduncles shorter than leaves, 6-12 cm, nude or with one simple or scarcely divided bract, with dense deciduous woolly hairs. Monoecious. Heads ca. 1 cm diam.; surface hemispherical; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries ca. 20 in 2 subequal rows, oblong or elliptic, thick, green, ± hairy when young, with a wide brown scarious margin (or tip only), not growing after anthesis; pistillate florets 90-260 in 3-6 rows, ca. 2.75 mm long, almost straight, yellow-green; corolla twice as long as wide, with equal teeth; staminate florets fewer or equal. Achenes up to 1.9 × 0.8 mm, not compressed, obscurely 4-angled, golden-brown, with a few shallow wrinkles. Probably flowers from spring to autumn.
[Reproduced from Lloyd (1972, New Zealand J. Bot. 10: 277–372, as Cotula plumosa (Hook.f.) Hook.f.) with permission from The Royal Society of New Zealand.]