An evergreen shrub up to 12 ft high; young shoots covered with a dense, buff down. Leaves alternate, slightly leathery, elliptic to lanceolate, usually pointed, tapered at the base, indistinctly wavy at the margins, 2 to 31⁄2 in. long, 1⁄2 to 11⁄4 in. wide, dark green above with appressed white hairs when young, buff or silvery below with fine very closely appressed down; stalks about 1⁄2 in. long. Flower-heads in corymbs, arising from the uppermost leaf-axils, forming large clusters, on slender densely downy stalks. Ray-florets white. Journ. R.H.S., Vol. 90, fig. 98, as O. rani; Salmon, New Zealand Flowers and Plants in Colour, t. 283.
A native of New Zealand. A very floriferous shrub, flowering in April and May, tolerant of wind and site, and as hardy as O. avicenniifolia; during the severe winter of 1961-2, it was only slightly injured in a west border at Kew and not injured at all at Knightshayes Court near Tiverton in Devon.
O. capillaris Buchan. O. arborescens var. capillaris (Buchan.) Kirk – A densely branched shrub up to 8 ft high. Leaves elliptic to suborbicular, more or less entire, 1⁄4 to 3⁄4 in. long, silvery white beneath. Flower-heads in corymbs; ray-florets white.
A native of New Zealand, on montane forest margins. Flowers in June. There is a fine specimen at Wakehurst Place, Sussex, about 8 ft high and 12 ft across.