HIGH-MOUNTAIN ROCK-PLANTS. 105 
tubercles surrounded by white silky hairs (fig. 77). This shrub is 
either erect or drooping, much branched, and a foot or considerably 
more in height, or, where exposed to the wind, it is compacted into 
a rounded cushion. Much commoner, it being found throughout 
most of the eastern mountains of the South Island, is H. Selago, of 
similar form to the above, but more slender; then there is also 
the still more slender H. microphylla—this occasionally a plant 
of Marlborough subalpine scrub—the three species affording an 
instructive example of gradation of form. Two willow-herbs are 
confined to rock—the thick-leaved willow-herb (Hpilobium crassum) 
(Marlborough to Central Otago) and #. brevipes (Marlborough and 
northern Canterbury), the former with fairly large and the latter 
with small flowers; both have thick, polished, green leaves. There 
are some curious rock-koromikos of the whipcord or semi-whipcord 
type, but most of these occur also in other associations. These 
koromikos are: Veronica annulata (Takitimu Mountains, Southland) ; 
V. tetrasticha (Marlborough and Canterbury); JV. lycopodioides 
(eastern mountains generally)—this probably embraces several dis- 
tinct varieties of local range, one, at any rate, being a plant of 
subalpine scrub; V. tumida (Nelson and Marlborough); V. Gil- 
liesiana (north-west Nelson and throughout alpine Westland). 
There are a good many more rock-koromikos: e.g., those with 
glaucous more or less fleshy small leaves—V. pinguifolia ; V. Gibbsu 
(Mounts Rintoul and Ben Nevis, Nelson); V. Buchanani (the com- 
mon Otago species of this class, an aggregate species made up out 
of several unnamed varieties); the remarkable V. epacridea—quite 
impossible to describe briefly in ordinary language; V. rupicola 
(Marlborough)—one of the ordinary small-leaved form of koromiko ; 
V. Raoulii (Marlborough and Canterbury)—the small leaves with 
a red edge and the flowers bright pink and produced early in spring. 
Perhaps the most striking denizens of rocks are the various kinds 
of vegetable-sheep (species of Raoulia), which form hard cushions, 
mostly white but occasionally green—R. rubra (fig. 67) of the 
Tararuas, R. Goyeni of Stewart Island, R. bryoides of wide range 
im the South Island (fig. 66), R. Buchanani of the Fiord Botanical 
District—and one of enormous size, R. eximia (figs. 64, 65). The 
raoulia-cushions are all constructed on the same plan. Above, the 
stems branch again and again, and towards their extremities are 
covered with small woolly leaves, packed as tightly as possible. 
