188 Transactions. — Botany. 



Aet. XXVII. — On new Phamogamic Plants of New Zealand* 



By William Colenso, F.R.S., F.L.S., etc. 



[Read before the Haivke's Barj Philosophical Institute, 12th September, 1887.] 



Class I. — Dicotyledons. 



Ordee I.t— EANUNCULACEiE. 



Genus 3. Ranunculus, Linn. 



1. R. reticulatus, sp. nov. 



Plant a dwarf tufted perennial, 2-3 inches high. Eoot-stock 

 thick, 1 inch long, ^ inch diameter, composed of many old and 

 loose coalescent petioles ; roots several, long, stout, spreading. 

 Leaves few, all radical, erect, spreading, thickish, light-yellowish- 

 brown or tawny-yellow and glabrous on the upper surface, yellow 

 beneath with long silky scattered white hairs, orbicular-reniform, 

 1|--1|- inches broad, 8-9 lines long, petiolate, basal sinus very 

 large, 3-parted ; segments flabelliform, spreading, cut to base, 

 f - 1 inch wide at top, very narrow (sub 1 line) at base ; sinuses 

 very large and open ; each segment sub 3 - 4-lobed ; lobes deeply 

 cut (^), outer margins coarsely crenate-serrate ; teeth very 

 obtuse ; veins yellowish-brown, sunk, obscure, rather distant, 

 anastomosing ; veinlets dark-brown, numerous, largely reticulate, 

 compoundly anastomosing throughout the whole leaf, extending 

 into the smallest teeth. Petioles 1-1-J incbes long, stoutish, 

 channelled above, coarsely striate, very hairy ; hairs long, white, 

 patent ; largely dilated at base into a kind of loosely sheathing 

 glabrous stipule, auricled upwards, margins very membranous. 



Hab. Sides of Mount Ngaruahoe, "altitude 3,000 feet," 

 County of East Taupo ; 1887 : Mr. 11. Hill (" apparently 

 scarce"). 



Obs. I. A peculiar (and, as far as I know, a unique) species, 

 differing widely from all its congeners ; perhaps its nearest ally 

 is R. pinguis, Hook, f., which is said in " Handbook Flora N.Z." 

 to have "veins reticulated;" (though such is not stated in the 

 very long and minute description of that species given in " Flora 

 Antarctica," vol. i., p. 3 ; neither is any such character shown 

 in the large plate containing several specimens of that plant 

 with dissections in the accompanying drawing in that work ;) 

 but this plant is also widely different from R. pinguis in several 

 other characters. Its main veins are irregular with copious 

 areola? between them with free clavate veinlets, somewhat like 

 what obtains in the venation of Volt/podium billardieri. 



* Mounted specimens of the plants herein described were exhibited at 

 the meeting. 



t The numbers attached to the orders and genera in this paper are those 

 of them in the " Handbook, Flora of New Zealand." 



