A. racemosa currently occupies a rather restricted range in northern New Zealand (where it is endemic), being found scattered throughout Little Barrier Island, Great Barrier Island, the Coromandel Peninsula, and from the Bay of Plenty across to East Cape.

The base of the leaf is rigid and nearly sessile, attached to the stem with a short and flat petiole.

The sepals are almost free, roughly 2–3 mm long, oblong-lanceolate, and blunt with ciliolate margins.

This form is a shorter more erect and compact raceme of light yellow male flowers.

[5] Archeria was named by Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1844 after the nineteenth century Tasmanian botanist W.