Ourisia sessilifolia is a small, hairy perennial rosette herb from the mountains of New Zealand's South Island and Stewart Island, where it grows in damp, shaded alpine herbfields. It is a species rather than a commonly cultivated garden plant, so care depends on keeping it cool and moist.
Family
Plantaginaceae (Plantain family)
Grows as
Perennial
Light
Part shade, Shade
Water
Keep the soil consistently moist but not waterlogged, as it grows in damp habitats.
Soil
Humus-rich, moisture-retentive, gritty mix with good drainage.
Temperature
Cool conditions suited to subalpine and subarctic climates; protect from heat and prolonged warm spells.
How easy
Hard
Native range
New Zealand (incl. Stewart I.)
Climate
subalpine or subarctic
About
Ourisia sessilifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Plantaginaceae that is endemic to high-elevation habitats in the South Island and Stewart Island of New Zealand. Joseph Dalton Hooker described O. sessilifolia in 1864. Plants of this species of New Zealand mountain foxglove are perennial, small-leaved, rosette herbs that are covered in a mixture of short glandular hairs and long non-glandular hairs. They have hairy, crenate, ovate leaves that are in a basal rosette. The flowers are in pairs or whorls in each node, with a and regular calyx and a white regular corolla. The corolla tube is purple inside, with one or three lines of white hairs inside, and purple outside. It is listed as Not Threatened.
Where it grows
Ourisia sessilifolia is a New Zealand mountain foxglove that is endemic to the South Island and Stewart Island of New Zealand. It is found throughout the South Island, in Western Nelson, Canterbury, Westland, Southland and Fiordland, as well as on Stewart Island, in high-elevation herbfields, meadows and grasslands in damp, shaded habitats near rocks, cliffs, and slopes from 800 to 2,100 m (2,600 to 6,900 ft) above sea level.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ourisia sessilifolia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.