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Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
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'Olearia odorata' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A shrub up to 12 ft high, of thin, sparse habit, with wiry, terete, little-branched stems. Leaves opposite, spathulate, 1⁄2 to 11⁄2 in. long, 1⁄8 to 1⁄4 in. wide near the rounded apex, bright green and glabrous above, silvery beneath with appressed, white hairs, tapering at the base, almost sessile. Flower-heads 1⁄4 in. across, in opposite fascicles of two to five, borne on short, arrested, bud-like branches, which usually also carry a pair of leaves; they are scented and dull greyish brown; the bracts of the involucre brown and viscous glandular. Ray-florets up to twenty, white. Salmon, New Zealand Flowers and Plants in Colour, t. 455.
Native of the South Island of New Zealand, where it is very common in the lake district of Otago. It is a curious, not particularly ornamental shrub introduced in 1908 and put into commerce as ‘O. virgata’. The true O. virgata has four-angled instead of terete stems.