326 NOTES ON SOME PLANTS OF OTAGO, NEW ZEALAND. 
the living state by local botanists, ought to lead to a great reduction 
- the present number of book-species ! 
P. prostrata, Vahl.  Sand-dunes about mouth of Kaikorai 
nig ; Kaikorai Hill ; Signal Hill, North-east Valley, Dunedin ; No- 
vember and December, in flower, W. L. L. Dr. Hooker named my 
Otago plant P. Urvilleana ; but, in his * Handbook" (p. 244), he de- 
scribes the latter as a North Island species only, and evidently refers 
such plants as mine to P. prostrata. Without a fuller suite of speci- 
mens before me, it is impossible to givea final opinion ; but from com- 
paring Dr. Hooker's descriptions of P. Urvilieana and P. prostrata 
with each other and with my plants, I find myself unable to recognize 
any valid specific distinction between them. In some of my plants 
the villosity of the young and ultimate ramuscles is marked ; and the 
distinction between whiteness and greyness of the hairs is not one that 
is very evident or satisfactory. In all my specimens the leaves are 
similar, of comparatively uniform character, about 4 in. long, mostly 
ovate or ovate-oblong, subacute or obtuse at tip, crowded more or less, 
and frequently imbricate. Branches sometimes 16-20 in. long. Some 
forms of the shrub are erect or suberect; the same form occurring on 
the sea-level (sand-dunes) and on the hill-ranges (e.g. Kaikorai, 1092 
feet). Flower-tube as villous as the ultimate ramuscles, and with the 
same white, long, silky hairs. Perianth-lobes shorter than the tube. 
Of ten New Zealand species of Pimelea, at least five others (appa- 
rently) occur in Otago, some of them ascending to elevations of . 
5500 ft. (on the Canterbury Alps, P. Lyallii, Hook. f.), viz. P. Gnidia, 
Forst.; P. Traversii, Hook. f. ; P. virgata, Vahl; P. sericeo-villosa, 
Hook. t 
Genus V. CoNvoLvuLus (Calystegia, Fl. N. Z.). 
Another of the numerous Otago genera that require revision by local 
botanists, with a view to the clearer definition, on the one hand, or the 
fusion on the other, of its present book-species, C. Tuguriorum, C. Sol- 
danella, C. sepium, and C. erubescens—with the British C. arvensis, L.— 
appear to me to pass into each other by imperceptible udis and 
I do not see where or how the specific demarcation-lines or definitions 
can be properly drawn ! 
. C. Tuguriorum, Br. Among “ scrub,” and in the forest, Stoney- 
hill bush; December, in flower, W. L. L. A climber, with the habit, 
in certain respects, of C. sepium, and in others of C. arvensis. 
