268 Transactions. — Botany. 



petiole; petiole fin.-liu. long. Flowering-stems (several) 

 horizonal and suberect, 5 in. -7 in. long, terete, slender, 

 greenish and purple, having (with pedicels) curious small 

 scattered white hooked hairs reversed. Flowers few, solitary, 

 2-3 scattered on stem from middle upwards on long slender 

 pedicels and 4-6 together forming a small loose corymb at top. 

 Calyx sepals 4, oblong, green-purple striped, subechinate, 

 2 outer slightly concave, their tips obtuse and involute, 2 inner 

 tips acute, with membranous white margins. Corolla 5 lines 

 diameter, bright-yellow, patent, shining, flat, vertical ; limb 

 suborbicular-obovate, gradually decreasing from below middle 

 to base ; tip slightly truncate. Stamens stout, 4 long, 2 short ; 

 style li lines long, stout, erect (with pod), as long as long 

 stamens ; stigma large, circular, densely pubescent. Pod 

 fin.-lin. long, linear-subterete, slightly compressed. Seeds 

 oblong, light-brown, smooth. 



Hab. Napier, in house-paddock ; flowering October, 1898 : 

 W. G. 



Obs. I. This little plant has caused me much research 

 and diligent examination, not only from its being wholly new 

 to me, but from its bright-yellow and striking flower, its long 

 style, its large bushy stigma, and its subterete pod ; so that 

 it scarcely belongs to the true Gardamine genus, as laid down 

 by Bentham and others — ^.e., flowers "white," pods "flat," 

 and seeds "pitted" — notwithstanding its resemblance — prwia 

 facie — to some of Sir J. D. Hooker's Auckland and Campbell 

 Islands Gardamine— eis given in his drawings of them in his 

 Flora of those islands — is very great. Moreover, while Ben- 

 tham says of the genus the flowers of Cardamine are "white" 

 (and certainly all our known southern species are so) and 

 their seeds " pitted," yet we have a British Gardamine with 

 coloured flowers — e.g., G. pratensis: and G. purpurea, a North 

 American species, has dark-purple flowers ; and I notice in 

 the "Index Kewensis " a G. flavescens, which, not knowing 

 it, I suppose to have yellowish flowers ; and Bentham him- 

 self, in his "Flora Australieusis," describes four species of 

 Australian Gardamine with their seeds "not pitted" {I.e., 

 vol. i., pp. 69, 70) ; and Hook, f., in his ample descriptions of the 

 Gardamine of Auckland and Campbell Islands, describes two 

 species as having pods " linearibus compresso-tetragonis." 



II. Further, I am not certain of my plant being truly 

 indigenous, for, were it so, I must surely have noticed its 

 striking open bright-coloured flower attracting notice. Last 

 year I found three small plants, distant from each other, grow- 

 ing in the side of the pathway to my house, which, from their 

 appearance, were from the year before. This pathway had 

 been then — in the former year — cleared out and laid down 

 thickly with limestone gravel from the quarry. At first sight I 



