Ozothamnus leptophyllus
species of plant
Ozothamnus leptophyllus, commonly known as tauhinu or cottonwood, is an endemic shrub of New Zealand. Tauhinu is fast-growing, reaching 2 metres in height and is a common plant of coastal farmland. This species is host to the larvae of the New Zealand endemic moth Homoeosoma anaspila.
Description
This dicot plant species is described as a gray or yellow-green bushy shrub being as tall as 5 meters, but most commonly stands at a height of around 2 to 3 meters tall. The stems of these leaves are very tomentose, meaning that the stems of these plants are covered with dense wooly hairs. Ozothamnus leptophyllus has simple broad leaves with an alternate leaf arrangement pattern which they use for photosynthesis and are self-supporting, only needing itself to grow vertically. Young leaves are slightly sticky, but when mature range from being glabrous to moderately hairy with a moderate amount of white hair populating the surface of the leaf. Leaves are up to 3mm wide and are spatulate. The branchlets of the plant are slender and hairless and the petioles, the stalk that attaches the leaf to the stem, surround branchlets and where leaves are arranged in series of three to four. The flowers of this plant tend to mostly be white, though on occasion have touches of pink or red on the bud, and have 4–15 florets per capitulum.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ozothamnus leptophyllus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.