Lagenophora Montana

Lagenophora montana

COMMON NAME Papataniwha

SYNONYMS Lagenifera montana Hook.f., Lagenifera stipitata var. montana (Hook.f.) Cabrera

FAMILY Asteraceae

AUTHORITY Lagenophora montana Hook.f.

FLORA CATEGORY Vascular – Native

ENDEMIC TAXON No

ENDEMIC GENUS No

ENDEMIC FAMILY No

STRUCTURAL CLASS Herbs - Dicotyledonous composites

NVS CODE LAGMON Kuratau. Jan 2009. Photographer: Jeremy Rolfe

CHROMOSOME NUMBER 2n = 18

CURRENT CONSERVATION STATUS 2018 | Threatened – Nationally Critical

DISTRIBUTION Indigenous. New Zealand: North Island (South Auckland, Hawkes Bay and Wellington), South Island (Nelson, Marlborough, Canterbury, Otago and Southland). Also in Australia (New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania)

HABITAT Subalpine to alpine seeps, cushion bogs, swamps, lake and tarn margins, wet tussock grassland and stream banks, or on damp, shaded rock shelves amongst mosses. Mostly at 600-900m altitude, occasionally lower. Kuratau. Jan 2009. Photographer: Jeremy Rolfe FEATURES Extensively creeping herb of wet places (often threaded through sphagnum moss). Roots fibrous, produced at intervals from slender spreading rhizomes (these 0.5-0.9 mm diameter when fresh). Leaves in loose rosettes, sometimes grading along lower stem into bracts; lamina membranous, bright lettuce green to bronze-green, often purpled or blotched with red, up to 50-80 × 15-18 mm, obtuse to broadly acute, glabrescent to glabrous, almost entire to shallowly dentate with up to 4 pairs of teeth; apex scarcely apiculate. Scape up to 300 mm long, glabrous to glabrate, usually dark purple, often bearing a few small narrowly deltoid to lanceolate bracts up to 10 mm long; hairs if present mostly restricted to below capitulum sometimes elsewhere on scape; appressed, antrorse near capitulum, spreading elsewhere; capitulum 3-7 mm diameter; Involucral bracts to 3 mm long, mostly narrowly oblong, obtuse to subacute. Ligules to 3 mm long, white, mauve or purpled; disc florets yellow. Cypsela 2.0-3.5 × 0.8-1.0 mm, oblanceolate, brown or purple-brown with paler margins; beak up to 0.5 mm long.

SIMILAR TAXA Lagenifera barkeri and L. cuneata are similar from these L. montana can be distinguished by its very long, slender and wiry scapes with minute, white, pinkish or purple flowers and membranous, glabrate or glabrous usually bright green leaves. Lagenifera barkerii has obvious leaf hairs, consistently white flowers, and slightly pointed leaves while L. cuneata has white flowers, hairy leaves and grows in drier habitats.

FLOWERING October - April

FLOWER COLOURS Yellow

FRUITING December - June

PROPAGATION TECHNIQUE Easily grown by division of whole plants. Fresh seed if available should germinate easily.

THREATS Herbarium specimens indicate that Lagenophora montana is probably rather uncommon. The species is easily overlooked, known from very few post 1980 collections, and the majority of those have been made from sites that are now choked with or threatened by weeds.

ETYMOLOGY lagenophora: From the Latin lagen ‘bottle or flask’ and –phora a Greek suffix denoting a carrier, possibly referring to the urceolate (urn-shaped) cypsela. montana: From the Latin mons ‘mountain’, meaning growing on mountains

TAXONOMIC NOTES The correct spelling of the genus has been the matter of some debate. Drury (1974) argued that the naming author of the genus Cassini had first spelled the genus as Lagenifera in 1816, and that this spelling therefore took priority over his later Lagenophora (proposed in 1818). Nevertheless Nicolson (1996) put forward a proposal to reject the earlier Lagenifera in favour of Lagenophora, and this proposal was accepted under the Vienna Code (see Art. 14.11 & App. III 2006). Nevertheless this ruling was accidentally overlooked by New Zealand botanists until it was drawn to their attention in 2013 (P. J. de Lange pers. comm. August 2013).

ATTRIBUTION Fact sheet prepared for NZPCN by P.J. de Lange (29 March 2010). Description based on fresh material and herbarium specimens held at AK and description from the Flora of Victoria (Entwistle & Walsh 2000).

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Drury, D.G. 1974: A Broadly Based Taxonomy of Lagenifera Section Lagenifera and Solenogyne (Compositae- Astereae), with an Account of their Species in New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Botany 12: 365-395 Entwistle, T.J.; Walsh, N.G. 2000: Flora of Victoria Vol. 4 Dicotyledons (Olacaceae To Asteraceae). Butterworth- Heinemann, Oxford. Nicolson, D.H. 1996: (1233) Proposal to conserve the name Lagenophora (Compositae) with a conserved spelling. Taxon 45: 341-342 CITATION Please cite as: de Lange, P.J. (Year at time of access): Lagenophora montana Fact Sheet (content continuously updated). New Zealand Plant Conservation Network. https://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora/species/lagenophora-montana/ (Date website was queried)

MORE INFORMATION https://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora/species/lagenophora-montana/