Olearia chathamica Kirk

An evergreen shrub 3 to 7 ft high; young shoots stout, furrowed, and like the undersurface of the leaves and flower-stalks, clothed with a soft white felt. Leaves alternate, 11⁄2 to 5 in. long, 1⁄2 to 11⁄2 in. wide, thick, leathery, oblanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, pointed, the margins set with rather regular blunt teeth, tapering at the base to a short broad stalk; green and glabrous above; the midrib is raised beneath and at each side of it are one or two similarly prominent veins running lengthwise. Flower-heads aster-like, 13⁄4 to 21⁄4 in. wide, solitary on stalks 4 to 6 in. long. Ray-florets numerous, usually white, sometimes tinged purplish, 5⁄8 in. long, linear, pointed. Disk-florets dark violet-purple, forming a conspicuous centre to the flower-head 3⁄4 in. wide. Outer bracts linear, pointed, 1⁄3 in. long, woolly towards the top. Bot. Mag., t. 8420.

Native of the Chatham Islands; introduced by Major A. A. Dorrien-Smith in 1910. It was successfully grown in the Rectory garden at Ludgvan, near Penzance, planted in peat, leaf-soil, and grit. It flowers in May and June. Among cultivated olearias O. chathamica most resembles O. semidentata and is equally beautiful, though more tender. It differs from that species in its larger, broader, more conspicuously toothed leaves with prominent veins beneath.