THE MEADOWS. 103 



days of sunshine in succession unknown even on the wet western 

 mountains. In harmony with this danger of drought, with the cold 

 of winter, with the heat of summer, and with the fierce wind-storms. 



' ' * 



the plants have developed, or preserved, special contrivances, or 

 peculiar habits of growth, some serving frequently more than one 

 purpose. Thus many plants are of most lowly growth. The genus 

 Dacrydium, to which belong several lofty forest-trees, amongst others 

 the rimu, is represented in the New Zealand mountains by a creeping- 

 plant which grows at times so densely as to form an actual turf or a 

 cushion (fig. 52). Many plants have the form of cushions, and very 

 beautiful are the rounded green cushions of Phyllachne Colensoi and 

 Don((tid novae-zelandiae, especially when gemmed with multitudes 

 of small white flowers. 



Roots of an extraordinary length form an excellent provision for 

 obtaining an abundant water-supply at all seasons, and these are very 

 frequent amongst the alpine plants. But, above all things, the leaf, 

 in structure and form, shows drought-resisting contrivances. The 

 most common of all is a mat of hairs on the under-surface of the leaf, 

 so characteristic of the celmisias (fig. 43). Some, again, such as the 

 Aciphyllas* (spear-grasses), have extremely rigid, vertical leaves, which 

 both resist the wind and can never receive the direct rays of the sun. 



Perhaps the most interesting feature of the New Zealand alpine 

 plants, and one which is not so well marked in the alpine plants of 

 Europe, but is seen in those of the Andes, is the capability of one 

 portion of the living plant to turn into peat, while its remaining part 

 grows vigorously, and even uses its own dead self as food material. 

 This habit is not specially in harmony with an alpine climate, but 

 rather with absence of sunlight and prevalence of rain and mist just 

 such a climate as exists in the subantarctic islands to-day. Most 

 of the celmisias are surrounded at the bases of their leaves bv 



*/ 



quite a thickness of rotting leaves, and the same may be seen in 

 a very large percentage of the New Zealand alpine plants. Such an 

 adaptation perhaps indicates that our alpine flora originated not on 

 the high mountains at all, but in the sunless and wet regions of the 

 south. 



* In this book the plants .generally referred to Lirjusticnm are included in 

 Aci'phylla. In this sentence only Aci/thi/Ha in the more restricted sense is in- 

 tended. 



8 Plants. 



