[Crown Copyright Reserved.} 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
No. J] | (1921 
I.—A REVISION OF THE AUSTRALIAN SPECIES 
OF STIPA. 
D. K. Hugues. 
A few months ago an inquiry concerning certain Australian 
“species of Stipa of the S. scabra group was addressed to Kew. 
‘This necessitated, in the first place, comparison with the original 
«f S. scabra, which was described very briefly by Lindley from 
a specimen collected by Mitchell (No. 125) on the Bogan River, 
New South Wales, and now in the Lindley Herbarium in Cam- 
bridge. Professor Seward ‘was kind enough to send it to Kew 
so that a careful collation with the specimens referred by 
Bentham to S. scabra was possible. This resulted in the recogni- 
tion of Mitchell’s type as distinct from much of the material 
at Kew under that name. Very probably Bentham had never 
seen it, as he placed it in the group with “ Ligules short, ciliate,” 
whilst Mitchell’s plant has quite conspicuous ligules over 3 mm. 
long. Nor do the specimens quoted by Bentham form a 
homogeneous group. The attempt to place the elements 
composing it into their proper species showed that most of the 
species which were drawn upon for comparison consisted of 
equally incongruous parts, so that nothing but a complete 
revision of the Australian species of Stipa could solve the problem. 
This Miss Hughes undertook under my supervision, with the 
result laid down in the present paper. 
The admission of 40 species in the place of the 15. species 
of the Flora Australiensis may seem startling, the more so as 
based on material 
characters which were not so obvious in the older sets ; 
on the whole the explanation must be sought in the admittedly 
liberal conception of species characteristic of the agi Ps : 
conception which in this, as in all pioneer work of that - : 
may be looked upon as an almost unavoidable condition for 
a@ (78)13281 Wt13;—Pp 147 1000 3/21 : A 
