Carmichaelia glabrescens (Petrie) Heenan

A round-headed tree 15 to 30 ft high in the wild; young shoots flattened, slightly grooved, not much spreading, glabrous, finally terete. Leaves reduced to triangular scales, scarcely visible. Flowers in a crowd of axillary racemes, 11⁄2 to 2 in. long towards the end of the shoot, each raceme carrying fifteen to twenty-five blossoms. Standard petal nearly 1⁄2 in. across, erect, oval, notched at the tip, white with a conspicuous purple blotch at the base and with similarly coloured nerves radiating upwards from it; wing-petals and keel much smaller, oblong; calyx bell-shaped with ciliate, triangular lobes. Linear, jointed pods 3⁄4 to 1 in. long, carrying about six seeds. Bot. Mag., t. 9530.

Native of the South Island of New Zealand, in the valley of the Clarence River, first flowered in this country in 1933. A very attractive tree described as resembling in habit a weeping willow, its lower branches being more or less pendulous but the upper ones ascending. It blossoms quite freely, however, as a shrub and is evidently as hardy as C. carmichaeliae, to which it is closely related, and needs the same conditions. But its flowers are less crowded, more purplish, the pods are larger and the axis of the racemes is glabrous.

Like C. carmichaeliae, this species is represented on the Temperate House Terrace at Kew. It flowers just as freely but is not so elegant.