DESCRIPTION: Evergreen large shrub or small tree up to 10 m, often forming dense swards from root suckers. Branchlets drooping. Leaves 20–55 x 5 – 22 mm, alternate, narrowly lanceolate to elliptic , green, glabrous, glossy, bluntly toothed, base cuneate, apex acute to subacuminate; petioles 3–6 mm long. Flowers in few-flowered axillary clusters or solitary, green. Capsule 2-valved, valves 4–5 mm long. Seeds 4.5–5.0 x c. 2.5 mm, chestnut brown, surface longitudinally ridged, immersed in arils. DISTRIBUTION: Canterbury, Manawatu, Wanganui, and Poverty Bay. HABITATS: Occurs in the understorey of open native bush, among scrub and grasses, and in cultivated gardens and arboreta. FIRST RECORD: Webb et al. (1988, p. 512), where it is treated as a zeta entry based on collections from Canterbury (e.g., CHR 437348, W.R. Sykes 437/86, Port Hills; CHR 437248, W.R. Sykes 95/86, Banks Peninsula, Church Bay). ADDITIONAL RECORDS: CHR 513040, W. R. Sykes 120/96,24 Apr 1996, Canterbury, Banks Peninsula, Governors Bay; CHR 483973, W.R. Sykes 301/93, 2 Nov 1993, Canterbury, Charteris Bay; CHR 437348, W.R. Sykes 437/86, 6 Dec 1986, Canterbury, Port Hills, Nicholson Park; CHR 483815, W.R. Sykes 214/93, 30 Apr 1993, Manawatu, Manawatu Plains, Bulls; CHR 463199, W.R. Sykes 339/89, 19 Jun 1989, Poverty Bay, near Ngatapa; CHR 515043, C.C. Ogle 3323, 8 Nov 1997, Wanganui, St Johns Hill. REGION OF ORIGIN: South America. NOTES: Spreading aggressively by root suckers and seed.

Maytenus boaria Molina, maiten, may form thickets by suckering from planted trees and has been collected twice, from a footpath and gutter in Christchurch and from a single thicket growing amongst indigenous trees at Church Bay, Banks Peninsula. An evergreen, glabrous tree up to 4 m (to 25 m in cultivation); lvs alternate, narrow-elliptic, ± apetiolate, serrulate, 15-50 mm long; fls small, greenish, 5-merous, in axillary fascicles; capsule 1-3-celled, 1-2-seeded, c. 4-5 mm diam.; aril red or orange-red. (Temperate S. America, 1988).