247 



In the same journal Dr. Cockayne gives a few general notes on 

 the more remarkable plants and general vegetation of the 

 southern islands, which are reproduced in conclusion : — 



f 



" First and foremost comes the meadow of stately, and for the 

 most part lovely, herbaceous plants which at sea level on Adams 

 Island, the most southerly of the Auckland group, and on the 

 higher land of the islands generally, cannot fail to move 

 admiration even in one knowing nothing of plants or of botany. 

 Perhaps the monarch of the meadow is a majestic plant of the 

 daisy family, belonging to a genus purely sub-antarctic, called 

 Pleurophyllum, related to the asters, so well-known in gardens. 

 The leaves are of great size and are corrugated. Their colour and 

 general appearance somewhat resembles a pale green velvet or 

 plush. The plants, with their huge goblet-like form are striking 

 enough, but when the beautiful purple flower-heads are raised 

 high in the air, dozens at a time, and side by side, they become a 

 glory. There are perhaps three other species of the same family ; 

 one with silvery leaves just tinged with green and dotting the 

 upland meadows as far as the eye can reach affords a charming 

 spectacle. With this as companion plants are a buttercup with a 

 golden flower, large out of all proportion to the size of the plants ; 

 a Veronica with straggling branches and many blossoms of 

 ultramarine blue ; the prince of tree forget-me-nots — Myosotis 

 capitata — its flowers a dark but most vivid blue ; gentians, their 

 petals marked with purple lines or lilac, white and even crimson ; 

 a Celmisia, which forms close mats of small stiff rosettes of 

 glistening leaves, not unlike highly polished greenstone and with 

 flower heads the size of a shilling, purple in the middle and with 

 pure white ray florets. Occasionally individuals may be met 

 with whose flowers are purple throughout, and such would be an 

 acquisition to any rock garden. There is a member of the lily 

 family with very fine orange-coloured blooms, densely set on a 

 succulent stalk, and which although beautiful enough individually 

 becomes still more worthy of admiration when, in countless 

 numbers, they light up a whole hillside. One especially pretty 

 plant forms bright green and dense cushions, these in due season 

 becoming snowy masses of whiteness from their numerous and 

 close-set small blooms. There are other flowering plants which 

 although not showy, are, for different reasons, of much interest. 

 Cotula plumosa, a species with bright green, elegant, feathery 

 leaves, occurs also on the far-distant Crozet Islands. There is a 

 species of plantain peculiar to Auckland Island on the high 

 mountains, and yet another which forms small rosettes on the 

 rocky shores. A bright green cushion plant of the pink family of 

 most dense habit grows on the coastal rocks of all the New 

 Zealand sub-antarctic islands, but is found nowhere else. A tall 

 nd handsome groundsel occurs on Antipodes Island alone, and 

 there only on the ground manured by the netty. 



v W 



most common 



it occurs in Campbell Island also— is a meadow consisting of a 

 large tussock-grass called Dantlwnia bromohles, which puts one 

 much in mind of the snow-grass meadows of the southern alps ot 

 New Zealand. But here all resemblance ends, turn the 

 Danthonia tussock and it does not come up again. Irequently, 



