HoLLOWAY. — Studies in the New Zealand Species of Lycopodium. 163 



habitats, and more especially in heavy scrub or at the edge of the forest 

 where it can climb. It will be seen that the eleven species mentioned cover 

 all of Pritzel's five main sections of the genus. The study of these species 

 as thev occur in New Zealand under the manifold varieties of climate, soil, 

 and altitude should present favourable data for the study of the plasticity 

 of the genus as a whole. 



In many parts of New Zealand the vegetation is as yet quite virgin, 

 but in many other localities the removal of the original forest by felling 

 and burning, or the disturbance of the soil by alluvial gold-mining, road 

 and railway cuttings, &c., has thrown open new ground for the various 

 species of Lycopodium to occupy, and the rapid and luxuriant spreading 

 of such species as L. cernwum, L. ramulosum, L. laterale, and also L. voluhile, 

 L. fastigiatum, and L. scariosum, over this new ground through spore- 

 germination has provided excellent opportunities for the study of their 

 prothalli and " seedling " forms. 



An examination of Baker's, and more especially of Pritzel's, classification 

 of the species of the entire genus brings into view the wide question of the 

 relation of elementary species to the species of taxonomy. The main 

 sections of the genus are well defined, and are in accord with the main 

 characters of both the gametophyte and the sporophyte generations in the 

 life-history of the species. In each of these sections certain well-defined 

 tvpe species are to be recognized, and around each of these type species 

 are grouped a number of variant forms, having each a more or less 

 limited distribution, to which specific names have been given. Many of 

 these latter species will be distinct and true-breeding forms, but probably 

 there will be found to be instances where a form which bears specific 

 rank and which is restricted to some particular country or other will prove 

 to be taxonomically identical with some other form which niay not have 

 been distinguished by a specific name and which belongs to quite another 

 biological region, the two forms having arisen quite independ-cntly either as 

 epharmonic or non-epharmonic adaptations. In his Flora Antarctica Hooker 

 says, " The importance of the question whether two perfectly similar plants 

 from remote quarters of the globe are considered as belonging to one species 

 has induced me to canvass very fully the claims of many supposed forms 

 of Lycopodiwn to the title of distinct species. In all such cases my first 

 object has been to determine whether the plant inhabits various inter- 

 mediate countries. When . . . they are found to do so there need 

 be little hesitation in referring them, after due examination, to one plant ; 

 in such instances the supposition of a double creation of the same species, 

 or of one of them being a variety of some other really distinct plant, which 

 plant wholly resembles another from other countries would be confessedly 

 a gratuitous assumption. Wiiere, however, no mtermeuiate stations can 

 be detected these suppositions become more plausible " (18, pp. 115-17). 



The genus Lycopodium has a remarkable distribution, some or other 

 of the species occurring in every country, in practically all soils, and at 

 every altitude. The persistence of such a very ancient Pteridophytic family 

 to the present day, and its wide distribution, is probably due not to the 

 different sections of the genus being representative of different parts of 

 the old Carboniferous Lycopods, but rather to the extreme plasticity of 

 the modern genus as a whole. This plasticity of both the gametophytic 

 and sporophytic characters is clearly indicated by the study of the species 

 which occur in New Zealand, and probably also of those in any other region. 

 To quote L. Cockayne again (10, p. 13), " Nothing has been brought out- 



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