GROWING-PLACES OF SOME INTRODUCED PLANTS. 155 
the Californian stinkweed (Gilia squarrosa), and in some places the 
well-known garden annual Eschscholua californica grow along the 
roadsides of Marlborough and Central Otago, two areas where the 
rainfall is low. The French honeysuckle (Centranthus ruber), origin- 
ally a garden-escape, is now becoming a beautiful feature of the 
railway cuttings both on pure rock and the dry stony hillside between 
Wellington and Ngaio. The Himalayan Leycesteria formosa, another 
garden-escape, occurs in damaged rain-forest in both Islands, and is 
sometimes quite abundant. The oxeye daisy (Chrysanthemum Leucan- 
themum) spreads to an amazing extent in pastures devoted to cattle or 
horses, and even replaces such vigorous grasses as cocksfoot (Dactylis 
glomerata) ; but where sheep are grazed on exactly similar ground it 
never becomes aggressive, and so well is this becoming known that 
in dairying districts sheep are put to graze in early summer on 
such infested pastures. The climbing-groundsel (Senecio mikanoides) 
invades more or less damaged forest, climbing over the plants of its 
outskirts. The common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is essentially 
a roadside weed of rather moist ground ; it does extend into pastures, 
but is eaten freely by sheep. The Deptford pink (Dianthus Armeria) 
is dotted here and there on montane low tussock-grassland. The 
water-buttercup (Ranunculus aquatilis) was first noticed about four- 
teen years ago in South Canterbury. Since then it has spread to 
inland waters throughout much of the South Island, and to the 
south, at any rate, of the North Island. Its distribution must 
have taken place by aid of aquatic birds. 
Amongst the introduced plants the most notorious are those 
known by the opprobrious term of ‘ weed.” All must know, 
though at the present time it is difficult to conceive such a state of 
affairs, that before the advent of the white man, and even for some 
considerable time afterwards, there were no weeds in New Zealand. 
Mr. T. W. Adams told the author how his land on the Canterbury 
Plain was at first weedless. A little further thought, and it is 
clear that in any virgin vegetation weeds must be unknown, for 
what is a weed but merely a plant growing where it is not wanted ? 
The mere presence of man in a new land, then, creates weeds. 
There is no occasion for a plant to be in itself useless to man 
to constitute it a weed. The best of plants, such as potatoes, if 
growing unbidden in a flower-garden may become weeds for the 
time being. Even in a New Zealand taxad forest all the trees not 
