ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE NEW ZEALAND FLORA 69 



The genus Stilbocarpa (Araliaceae), of which three species are 

 described, is " one of the most interesting found in the New 

 Zealand area, from the point of view of geographical distribution ; 

 it has no near allies," and " its affinities appear to be sufficient to 

 preclude the possibility of the genus having developed anywhere 

 close to its present area of distribution. Consequently, the 

 problem of what its ancestry has been, from what lands it has 

 wandered, and how it arrived in its present habitat, become 

 questions of some moment ; and although answers cannot be 

 supplied at the present time, we may hope that patient inquiry 

 and observation may yet supply them." Under Panax anomalwn, 

 Mr. Cheeseman, having called attention to the close resemblance 

 between this and a considerable number of plants of widely 

 separated families, remarks : '|' To my mind, all attempts that have 

 been made to explain why a number of plants of diverse relation- 

 ships should have assumed a form so closely similar that they 

 can hardly be distinguished without minute investigation, or, in 

 short, why they should apparently mimic a common standard of 

 growth and habit, have fallen far short of solving the difficulties 

 of the case. No sufficient reason has also been given for the 

 curious fact that so many of these plants grow intermixed in 

 large numbers, in some cases favouring special associations of 

 their own, and that their chief habitat is in alluvial soils or along 

 the banks of rivers." In the same order is the remarkable Meryta 

 Sinclairii, confined to two small groups of islands, 



In Compositae, the genera Olearia and Celmisia, each con- 

 taining plants of much beauty, figure extensively. The remark- 

 able colouring of C. Traversii is thus described: "The upper 

 surface of tlie leaf is dark brownish-green ; the under-surface and 

 margins are clothed with a rich and soft bright ferruginous 

 tomentum ; the midrib beneath and petiole are purple : while the 

 leaf-sheath is covered with lax snow-white tomentum. When to 

 a tuft of leaves like the above are added from two to six stout 

 scapes also clothed with ferruginous tomentum, and bearing 

 flowers sometimes 2 in. in diameter, it may well be imagined that 

 the plant is one which would arrest the attention of the most 

 incurious traveller." There is an excellent description of the 

 cushions of Baoulia exiynia, the large woolly masses of which, 

 with those of Haastia loulvinaris, have, from their appearance, 

 been appropriately styled " vegetable sheep." 



The five plates of Gentiana (three of them Mr. Cheeseman's 

 species) are valuable in view of the treatment the New Zealand 

 species have received at the hands not only of F. von Mueller, but 

 of J. D. Hooker and Bentham, all of whom, " dealing solely with 

 dried specimens," have arrived at combinations " which every 

 field botanist in New Zealand finds himself unable to agree with." 



" From a scientific point of view the most interesting plant 

 found in the Chatham Islands," to which it is confined, is MyosG- 

 tidium nohile : it is certainly one of the most beautiful, and, oddly 

 enough, first became known through specimens cultivated in 

 England. At one time an abundant coastal plant in the Chathams, 



