Puare 54.—EPILOBIUM MELANOCAULON. 
Famiry ONAGRACE. | [Genus EPILOBIUM, Lin. 
Epilobium melanocaulon, Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 813 ; Cheesem. Man. N.Z. Fl. 183. 
Epilobium melanocaulon was discovered at about the same time by Mr. Colenso 
in the Ruahine Range and by Mr. Bidwill in the Nelson Provincial District. So 
far as the North Island is concerned, I have seen no specimens except those 
collected by Mr. Colenso; but in the South Island it has been found to be 
generally distributed in suitable localities from Nelson to Foveaux Strait. It is 
essentially one of those plants most abundant on the great stretches of shingle which 
fill the beds of many of the larger rivers which drain the Southern Alps. These 
banks of shingle may be covered in heavy floods, but ordinarily are quite bare, and 
support a very peculiar vegetation, such as several species of Raoulia, Helichrysum 
depressum, Muhlenbeckia axillaris, Veronica Bidwilla, and many others, among 
which the subject of this plate is always conspicuous. 
In its typical state H. melanocaulon is perhaps as easily recognized as any 
species of the genus. Its erect sparingly branched rigid stems, springing in clumps 
from a hard and woody rootstock, and remarkable for their black or purplish-black 
colour, are most characteristic, as are the close-set and deeply-toothed leaves. 
The small flowers, and glabrous capsules on very short peduncles, are also excellent 
marks of the species. Its nearest ally is doubtless my FH. rostratum, which has the 
same habit, but is much smaller, paler in colour, and covered with a uniform grey 
pubescence. The capsules are markedly different, being abruptly narrowed into 
a short beak at the tip. I do not know that it has any other close ally. In the 
“Handbook” Sir J. D. Hooker remarks that “‘ states of it are difficult to separate 
from E. confertifolium, glabellum, and brevipes.” But the first and last of these 
are really altogether different in habit, foliage, and inflorescence; and as for 
E. glabellum, it can generally be distinguished without difficulty by the much 
more developed inflorescence, which gives an entirely different aspect to the plant. 
The leaves are also much larger and broader, and not so deeply toothed. 
In the Manual I have reduced Professor Haussknecht’s £. polyclonum to the 
position of a variety of H. melanocaulon. It chiefly differs in the more slender 
branched stems, which are bifariously pubescent, and in the more distant less deeply 
toothed leaves ; but these characters are barely sufficient to warrant its separation 
as a species. 
PratE 54. Epilobium melanocaulon, drawn from specimens collected on the shingle of the Cass 
River, Lake Tekapo. Fig. 1, flower, with its subtending leaf or bract (x 3); 2, petal and stamen 
(x5); 3, back view of anther (x5); 4, stigma (x5); 5, 11pe capsule (x 2); 6, seed (x 8). 
