344 Transactions.- -Botany. 



year, forms the staple of conversation at the local tables 

 d'hote. 



I remember reading some time back of a London belle 

 (of whom it may be said she possessed "more money than 

 wit ") spending no less a sum than £300 in the making of 

 a dress-cloak or mantle for her use at a grand ball completely 

 overlaid with edelweiss. 



I can show you specimens of the southern plant, — Gnapha- 

 liuni (Ilclichrysum) grandiceps — and of the Swiss plant — 

 Lcontopodium alpinum — the true edelweiss ; but for our 

 northern (or Euahine) plant I must refer you to the coloured 

 drawing of it in Hooker's " Flora Novse-Zelandise," made from 

 my Ruahine specimen. I never met with this plant but once 

 in all my visits to that mountain region, and that was on the 

 edge of their western summits, at above 5,000ft. elevation. 

 It was profusely growing on the outer edge of a steep cliffy 

 fall of broken shingle, through which it was a difficult matter 

 to force one's way up to it, as the small dry debris from the 

 high cliff formed such a loose slope (or talus) on which there 

 was no standing, and carried everything down before it. I 

 often sought this plane on subsequent visits, but without 

 success. Dr. Sinclair, however, detected it growing in a 

 siniilar situation in the South Island, at " Tarndale Mountains, 

 5,000ft. altitude, in shingle " ; and it is worthy of remark that 

 in both Islands it keeps at about the same elevation as the 

 allied Swiss plant. 



Between the two genera of Gnaphaliuui {Hclichrysum) and 

 Leontopodium there is but very little difference. The small 

 genus of Leontopodium, containing only three species, 

 established by Brown, has been merged into (Tnaphalium by 

 both Hooker and Bentham. 



4. Of the Rose of Jekicho = Anastatica hicrochiintica, 



Linn . 

 Another highly curious, little-known, and local plant, 

 commonly known as "the rose of Jericho," and also "holy 

 rose," I now bring to your notice. I have lately obtained 

 the loan of a perfect plant of this singular vegetable for 

 exhibition here, thinking it would prove as great a curiosity to 

 you as it was to me, for, although I knew it from drawings 

 and from description, I had never before seen a specimen. 

 Strange to say, this plant is not only no rose, nor even 

 distantly allied to that delightful flowering family, but is a 

 species of the more common Cruciferous or Brassica order, to 

 which our cabbage, turnip, radish, and watercress belong. 

 It is, moreover, an annual very local in its habitat, growing 

 wild in the sandy and deserts of Egypt and of Syria, and on 

 the coasts of the Eed Sea, and is the only species of its genus ; 



