Petrie. — Description* of New Native Flowering-plants. 55 



Jin. broad, obtuse or subacute, glabrous, more or less concave above,, 

 keeled veinless, cartilaginous at the edges, contracted into a short stout 

 petiole ; floral leaves longer and broader, much thinner, yellowish-green, 

 and more or less obviously veined. 



Flowers in terminal heads of 9-15, § in. long, sessile, pale-rose, silky- 

 villous, dioecious or polygamo-dioecious ; anthers scarcely exserted ; styles 

 elongated, very slender, finely capitate. 



Fruit unknown. 



[{ab. — Garvie Mountains, Southland County ; and Symmetry Peaks, 

 Eyre Mountains, Lake County : D. L. Poppelwell ! Mount Cleughearn, 

 Fiord County : J. Crosby Smith ! 



The present species is intermediate between P. Traversii Hook. f. and 

 P. Crosby -Smithii (mihi). 



10. Note on the Discovery of Simplicia laxa T. Kirk. 



In Mr. Cheeseman's Illustrations of the New Zealand Flora this grass 

 is stated to have been first collected by the late Mr. Kirk at the Dry River 

 Station, Ruaniahanga, Lower Wairarapa, in January, 1880. This is incorrect, 

 as the plant was discovered by me near the Deep Stream accommodation- 

 house or hotel at the end of February, 1877. That was the only 

 occasion on which I visited that locality, or journeyed over the Rock and 

 Pillar Road from Alexandra to Outram. The occasion was made memo- 

 rable to me by the fact that I was hurriedly returning from Arrowtown 

 to Dunedin because Mr. John Hislop (later Dr. Hislop), the Secretary to the 

 Otago Education Board, had just been invited to proceed to Wellington 

 to assist the Hon. Mr. Bowen in drafting the Education Act that was passed 

 during the parliamentary session of 1877. I was at the time fully aware 

 that my find belonged to a genus of grasses new to New Zealand, but the 

 specimens were imperfect, and as the Kew authorities referred them to 

 Sporobolus I took no steps to publish my discovery. When a few years 

 later I got good specimens near Waikouaiti, Mr. Kirk sent me, in return for 

 .specimens forwarded to him, some pieces of the Wairarapa plant, named 

 Pyxidiopsis prona, a name that he afterwards abandoned. 



11. Note on Deyeuxia filiformis (G. Forst.) Petrie. 



In January, 1913, I collected, at the seaside near Bluff (Southland), 

 specimens of this species in which a few of the spikelets contain two florets. 

 The upper floret terminates the rhachilla, and is considerably smaller than 

 the lower. It is generally infertile, but in some cases it had developed a 

 caryopsis. Li works accessible here I have not been able to find any record 

 of an abnormality of this kind, and it may be that the occurrence of a second 

 floret in the spikelets of Deyeuxia has not been observed before. The 

 rhachilla in this genus suggests the suppression of a second or upper floret. 

 and the occasional development of the second floret lends to the rhachilla, 

 in itself apparently a trivial character, considerable genetic significance, 

 enhancing its value as a diagnostic character in marking the genus off from 

 Agrostis L. and Calamagrostis Roth, in both of which there seems to exist 

 no indication of descent from forms having more than one floret in the 

 spikelet. 



