104 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
There are a few other specially charming flowering-plants which 
must be mentioned. The two small trees, the mountain-ribbonwood 
(Gaya Lyall) and the hoary mountain-ribbonwood (G. ribifolia), 
bear in due season their wealth of snowy blossoms, brightening the 
subalpine scrub or the outskirts of the gloomy southern-beech forest. 
Boggy or even stony ground of western mountains in the South Island 
is frequently decorated by the white flowers, three-quarters of an inch 
in diameter, of the straggling Veronica macrantha, its leaves glossy- 
green. Throughout the high mountains of the west of the South 
Island, in deep pockets of peaty soil on rocky ground, grows the 
alpine avens (Geum uniflorum), a creeping semi-woody plant raising 
its flowers, each one inch across, well above the foliage. Finally, 
the two species of edelweiss—Leucogenes Leontopodium (fig. 57) and 
L. grandiceps—far surpassing their Swiss namesake (Leontopodium 
alpinum) in beauty, must not be forgotten, which, though concluding 
this list, might with more propriety stand at the very top. 
The gradual change of rock into a soil more favourable for seed- 
plants, by way of debris-slopes, and so on, is so striking that it seems 
most natural when dealing with the plant-communities to commence 
with those of rocks and to end with those where the plants them- 
selves have built up most of their dwelling-place—so far as soil is 
concerned—out of their own dead parts. 
Many of the most highly specialized plants have dry rock-faces 
as their habitations; indeed, they have assumed a form so suited 
to the circumstances that they cannot compete with their more 
plastic but less highly differentiated fellows for more hospitable 
abodes. 
All the rock-species do not live side by side, but the locality is 
given in brackets where those of restricted range have their homes. 
Mosses and lichens are always present, a black tufted lichen being 
characteristic of the highest peaks (fig. 66). 
The following shrubs are confined to dry rock-faces: The coral- 
shrub (Helichrysum coralloides) (Marlborough) is a shrub up to 3 feet 
in diameter, with many stout branches, the outermost of which are 
closely covered with leaves closely pressed to the slender stem and 
increasing its apparent diameter fourfold. These leaves are densely 
covered with white silky hairs on the mner (upper) surface, but 
the outer (under) surface has its upper half thickened and forming 
a dark-green glossy boss. Thus the stem appears covered with green 
