430 Transactions.— Botany. 
North Island.—Near Auckland; Valley of the Thames; ete.: T.F.C. 
Probably not uncommon in the high interior country. 
South Island.—Common in moist places in mountain districts, rarer in 
the lowlands. Nelson—Mount Arthur plateau, ascending to 4,500 feet ; 
Red Hills; Raglan Range; Wairau Gorge, etc.: T.F.C. Canterbury— 
Upper Waimakariri; Arthur’s Pass; Burke's Pass; Mackenzie Plains; 
Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki; Tasman River, etc.: 7.F.C. Canterbury 
Plains: T. Kirk. Otago—abundant in the interior: J. Buchanan! D. 
Petrie! G. M. Thomson! 
This and the two following species form a small group possessing rather 
broad lenticular or flattened nerved perigynia, with remarkably short beaks. 
C. vulgaris is easily separated from the other two by its much smaller size, 
few, short and nearly sessile spikelets, and by the usually obtuse glumes. 
Our plant is generally kept as a distinct variety, although some specimens 
can hardly be distinguished from northern forms. In size it varies exceed- 
ingly—from one or two inches to nearly two feet,—and the breadth of the 
leaves, number and size of the spikelets, shape of the glumes, colour and 
shape of the perigynia are all subject to considerable variation. The peri- 
gynia are very frequently attacked by the fungus Ustilago urceolorum, and 
ultimately converted into a dusty mass of spores. In some districts it is 
difficult to find specimens free from the Ustilago. 
C. vulgaris has a wide geographical range. It is abundant in the Soler 
regions of Europe, Asia, and America, extending northwards as far as 
Greenland and Behring Straits. In the southern hemisphere, outside 
New Zealand, it is abundant in Australia and Tasmania, and is also found 
in Chili. 
14. C. subdola, Boott, Trans. Linn. Bees: 20, 142; Hook. fil. Fl. Nov. 
Zeal., i., 282; Handbook N.Z. Flora, 914. 
North Island.—Not uncommon in marshy places, from Mongonui south- 
wards. 
South Island.—Nelson: Acheron Valley, Travers (Handbook); Upper 
Takaka and Mount Arthur plateau, 2,500-4,000 feet, T.F.C. Canterbury: 
various places in the Southern Alps, T. Kirk, T.F.C. Stewart Island: 
- T. Kirk. Altitudinal range from sea-level to nearly 4,000 feet. 
A tall, leafy, grassy species, very common in swamps in the northern 
portion of the colony. It is allied to the European and Australian 
C. acuta, L.; but the oblong emarginate glumes, usually furnished with a 
stout awn from the centre of the emargination, are very different to the 
narrow, gradually tapering glumes of C. acuta. 
As in C. acuta, it often happens that in some of the lower flowers of the 
female spikelets the rachilla is produced beyond the perigynium, sometimes 
bearing one or two flowers with imperfect or fully developed perigynia, 
