88 DR. O. STAPF ON THE FLORA OF MOUNT KINABALU. 
biological characters are concerned, but very important on account of their geographical 
relations. On these I shall dwell later on. It will be sufficient to mention here the 
generic names in order to give an idea of the composition of this peculiar vegetation. 
They are Ranunculus, Potentilla, Haloragis, Gentiana, Havilandia, a new genus of 
Boraginesz allied to Trigonotis and Myosotis, probably also Trachymene and Euphrasia, 
Aletris, and a few sedges. 
c. Vegetation of the Rocks.—There is probably little justification to speak of the 
vegetation of the rocks as truly distinet from that of the bogs, as the conditions of 
plant-life afforded by the small accumulations of soil in crevices cannot—in this 
particular case—materially differ from those of the bogs. The few plants which I 
have to enumerate here are a variety of Potentilla leuconota, Haloragis micrantha, 
Trachymene saniculefolia, in a very stunted form, Pilea Johniana, Platyelinis stachyoides, 
Scheenus apogon, and two grasses limited to the very top, namely, varieties of Deschampsia 
flexuosa and of Agrostis canina. 
B. On somE BIOLOGICAL FEATURES. 
Under this heading I wish to deal briefly with some of the more obvious biological 
characters of the vegetation, so far as they may be ascertained from the dry material 
. and the notes of collectors. 
1. Foliage of the Forest Vegetation.—The woody vegetation is almost exclusively 
evergreen, and I doubt whether there are more than a few shrubs or trees in the Kinabalu 
collections having periodically deciduous foliage, though I find about 25 species dis- 
tinguished by thin membranaceous leaves and about as many by leaves which, although 
much firmer, still might be called membranaceous or papyraceous. It is very remarkable 
that the species having thin membranaceous leaves are, perhaps with a single exception, 
limited to the lower mountain zone, and there chiefly to the part below 4000 feet. The 
other class, to which species of Sawrauja, Urophyllum, Lasianthus, Melastoma, &c. 
belong, are more equally distributed. In any case the woody plants having truly coria- 
ceous leaves amount in all the zones taken together to almost 80 per cent., and to more 
than 80 per cent. above 6000 feet. These coriaceous leaves (see also p. 84) are generally 
glabrous, and where there is an indumentum in a young state it quickly disappears from 
the upper side, at least after the unfolding of the lamina, usually leaving a glossy 
surface of a deep green. The lower side is oftener clothed with a distinct indu- 
mentum, which is either softly tomentose or silky, or consists of stiff spreading hairs. A 
tomentose covering occurs, for instance, in Polyosma bracteolata, Geunsia farinosa, and 
in Quercus Havilandii, plants of widely different systematic affinities, habit, and 
habitat. Eleocarpus sericea, Rubus lineatus, and Urophyllum lineatum have silky 
leaves, the latter chiefly along the nerves which are unprotected in the bud. The 
leaves of five of the Myrtacee also are silky, though only so in a very early stage and on 
the middle nerve alone, evidently a protective contrivance. A strigillose indumentum is 
very distinct in the young state of Melastoma, Marumia, Dissocheta, and Saurauja, yet it 
deus gradually when the leaves are fully grown, whilst it is persistent, for instance, 
