This beautiful plant has narrowish, erect, pointed, dark-green leaves, scarcely an inch in width, elegantly banded at the margin with one or sometimes two narrow stripes of creamy white. It has the same distichous mode of growth as P. tenax, but is altogether a smaller and more elegant plant, while its more erect habit and narrower leaves give it quite a distinct appearance from that of the variegated Phormium tenax. It is a native of New Zealand.