

TRAN SACTION S 





OF THE 



NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 



1916. 



Art. I. — Notes from the Canterbury College Mountain Biological Station, Cass. 



No. 5. — The Mat-plants, Cushion-plants, and Allied Forms of the 

 Cass Kiver Bed (Eastern Botanical District, New Zealand). 



By C. E. Foweraker, MA., Assistant, Biological Laboratory, Canterbury 



College. 



[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 4th October, 1916; received by 

 Editors, 30th December, 1916 ; issued separately, 28th June, 1917.] 



Plates I-VI. 



I. Introduction. 

 (A.) General. 



In the following pages an account is given of certain mat- or cushion-plants 

 which occur in the valley of the Biver Cass, Canterbury, South Island of 

 New Zealand.* Their environmental conditions and general morphology 

 are described, and certain conclusions are drawn from the observations 

 made. The locality is somewhat out of the way, and the visits made to 

 it were short and at wide intervals. Most of the observations were con- 

 ducted in the field, though a considerable amount of laboratory work was 

 done in the investigation of structure, and a few experiments were made 

 in growing certain plants under different conditions. 



Of the publications which deal with the neighbourhood of Cass or of 

 other parts of the South Island with a close ecological resemblance, the first 

 to be mentioned is that by L. Cockayne (1900), who gave a general account 

 of the conditions for plant-life in the Waimakariri River basin, together with 

 certain details regarding the response of the plants to these conditions, and 

 a brief account of the plant-formations. Later, the above ecologist, in col- 

 laboration with Laing (Speight, Cockayne, and Laing, 1911), gave»a much 

 fuller account of the very similar vegetation of the Rakaia Valley and 

 neighbouring mountains. Cockayne (1911) supplemented this by a more 

 detailed account of the vegetation of the Rakaia near its source, dealing 

 with the vegetation-dynamics, the Ramdia-ioxm., and publishing a synopsis 

 of all the species of the habitat in terms of their growth-forms. Finally, 

 Cockayne and the author (1916) dealt with the plant-associations of the 

 area under consideration, but their treatment is not by any means ex- 

 haustive. 



* For a map showing the exact locality of the area see Chilton, 1915, p. 332 ; and 

 for a more detailed map see Speight, 1916, p. 146. 



1— Trans. 



