88 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
of Celmisia longiflora); the turfy raoulia (Raoulia subsericea) ; and 
the common New Zealand groundsel (varieties of Senecio bellidiordes). 
One plant, on account of its beauty, deserves special mention. 
This is the snow-gentian (Gentiana corymbifera)—Butler’s “ stupid 
gentian.” The plant itself has an open rosette of a few brownish, 
smooth leaves, and a tap-root which descends deeply ito the clayey, 
stony soil. In summer the plant puts forth a stout flower - stalk, 
which above branches closely into numerous branchlets bearing 
crowded together many large white blossoms, each about three- 
quarters of an inch in diameter. These plants dot the ground for 
acres at a time, and when in full bloom are a charming spectacle. 
Some of the shrubs of the low tussock-grassland at once attract 
attention from their bizarre appearance. Such are the wild-irishman 
(Discaria towmatou), a semi-divaricating deciduous shrub, some 3 
or 4 feet high, bearing abundant sharp green spies, and pro- 
ducing in early spring small sweet-scented white flowers (fig. 10) : 
various species of New Zealand broom according to the locality, 
the commonest tall species being the common New Zealand broom 
(Carmichaelia subulata) ; a small heath, Leucopogon Fraseri, forming 
mats of slender stems furnished with short brownish sharp-pointed 
small leaves which frequently overlap, and bearing in abundance 
its white sweet-scented flowers, which are succeeded by yellowish- 
orange “ berries’; various dwarf brooms, one cushion-forming and 
found only in the mountains, the stout dwarf broom (Carmichaelia ~ 
Monroi), and the others spreading greatly by underground stems, 
and forming mats of erect flattened green branches an inch or two 
high; of these, the common dwarf broom (C. nana) occurs in the 
lowlands, but the two others (C. Enysii and C. uniflora) belong to 
stony, flat ground in mountain-valleys, where the last-named may 
grow associated with the mountain-twitch (Triodia exigua) and a 
dwarf koromiko with blue flowers (Veronica pimeleoides var. minor). 
The cabbage-tree (Cordyline australis) is a feature of the association, _ 
both in the lowlands and the lower montane belt; so, too, is the 
tutu (Coriaria sarmentosa), which, in the grassland, dies yearly to the 
eround, and may not be identical with the tall evergreen forest-shrub. 
In the early days of sheep-farming there were great colonies of 
the spaniard (Aczphylla Colensoi). This plant consists of a circular 
mass of thick hard extremely sharp bayonet-like yellowish-green 
leaves forming an erect open rosette 2 feet or more high, out of 
