'276 Transaction^. — Botany. 



idea of what the virgin formation was like, for although many 

 plants are destroyed their remnants remain. Some few places 

 still approximate to the primeval condition, and — most im- 

 portant of all — introduced plants have not as yet appeared in 

 any quantity, and so increased enormously the difficulty of 

 determining the character of the virgin formation. 



The dominant plant is a tussock-grass with long narrow 

 filiform leaves, probably a species of Poa — perhaps, indeed, 

 identical with the meadow tussock of Antipodes Island, 

 referred by Kirk to Poa anceps. My specimens, collected in 

 midwinter, were too poor for identification; even Mr. D. 

 Petrie, whose knowledge of the New Zealand grasses is so 

 thorough, could make no definite statement as to the species.''' 

 By Mr. Gordon, of Campbell Island, it is called " silver- 

 tussock," and that name will serve admirably for the present. 



With the silver- tussock is mixed occasionally a little 

 Danthonia bromoides, and everywhere in the open spaces 

 between the tussocks are the great colonies of Bidbinella 

 rossii which attracted the attention of Hooker so that he 

 wrote (46, p. 73), "It" [Bulbmella] "covered the swampy 

 sides of the hills in such profusion as to be distinctly visible 

 at a full mile from shore." Similarlv, the allied but smaller 

 B. hookeri clothes many hillsides in the lower mountain 

 region of the South Island with sheets of yellow. In these 

 same open places Pleurophyllum speciosum was very frequent, 

 while the dark-green Aspidiicm ve.stiium, the brown-coloured 

 Lomaria j^f'ocera, and prostrate bushes of Coprosma ciliata 

 were common. These bushes ai-e in some places flattened 

 close to the ground; in other places, where the shelter is 

 greater, they may be about l-9m. long x 90 cm. wide x 90 cm. 

 tall. Their surface is sometimes flat, as if cut by shears, or at 

 other times marked by long longitudinal ridges. They form 

 extremely dense, large, flattened, pale-green hummocks, with 

 bare, much-interlacing, rather thick, twisted branches beneath, 

 looking not unlike stems of lianes ; but the dense green sur- 

 face, composed of quite small leaves, is at most 9 cm. or 

 10 cm. in depth. In some cases reversion-shoots are given off 

 from the base of the plant, in the slielter and dim light of its 

 interior, having very much larger leaves than those of the 

 adult, and being almost identical with those of seedlings. In 

 one seedling examined the stem was densely pilose ; leaves 

 ovate-oblong with rounded or cuneate base, pale -green, 

 ciliated, a few hairs sometimes on the upper surface of the 

 lamina, but always on the midrib. Petiole densely hairy, 



• Since writing this Mr. Petrie informs me that the Antipodes Island 

 tussock was the one lie had referred to I'oa chatliamica, but that he, and 

 probably Mr. Gheeseman also, now considers it to be a new and unnamed 

 species. 



