518 Transactions. 



Danthonia pilosa is a species about which I have some hesi- 

 tation in writing, as I am not sure of the type. The commoner 

 form at Tutira is locally a bad grass, both on account of the 

 dislike to it — except when fresh from a burn — of stock, and 

 furthermore that in the wet Tutira climate fires can only be 

 run over this grass every second, or third, or even fourth season. 

 On the other hand, this form might be a valuable plant on 

 hard clay soils in a dry district. This, the less-good form, has 

 narrow involute leaves on erect culms. In the better variety 

 the leaves are broader, flatter, very pilose, and of a noticeably 

 deeper green colour, and the culms have at first a decumbent 

 habit, the seed-stalks rising only from the first joint and some 

 continuing to he flat. This habit of the culms may arise, how- 

 ever, from the centre of the plant having been eaten out by 

 sheep, for I have noticed in heavily stocked country Microlcena 

 stipoides and some other grasses to a lesser degree adopt the 

 same device, as if for self-preservation, and with an apparently 

 instinctive knowledge that culms lying flat on the ground would 

 be more likely to reach maturity and perpetuate the species. 

 These two forms of D. pilosa were unknown at Tutira in 1882, 

 and the first clump ever seen by me in the district was on the 

 old Tongaio-Tutira pack-track, at a spot several miles from 

 my southern boundary. In 1885, however, I discovered it 

 covering scores and even hundreds of acres twenty miles to the 

 north-east ; but it was not until the early nineties that it began 

 to make its appearance on Tutira. Then, within a couple of 

 seasons, it seemed to establish itself all over the run on spots 

 specially adapted to its requirements, and since then each suc- 

 ceeding year sees the hard dry clay soils more and more over- 

 run. On pumiceous soils it seems less happy, and so far it has 

 not encroached on the turf of the high ranges to the west. 



Arundo conspicua adorns many parts of the run with its 

 long nodding plumes. 



Arundo julvida grows thickly on several of the almost pre- 

 cipitous papa slopes that face towards the south. 



In the eighties there was a patch of land on Tutira known as 

 the " Burnt Bush " ; this had been forest through which in an 

 extra dry season a fire had run, probably about twenty years 

 previously, and long before the run had been " taken up " or 

 stocked. Fern had in the eighties not quite taken possession of 

 every foot of this land, where still the great gaunt boles stood in 

 thousands, and here the commonest of the surviving grasses was 

 Poa anceps. There are several very slightly differing varieties 

 on the run, and it is one of the native species that will probably 

 compose eventually the turf of the poorer or higher lands. 



