434 - Transactions. —Botany. 
21. C. testacea, Sol, mss.—Stems tufted, slender, leafy, nearly smooth, 
from 4 to 18 inches high, in some forms elongating in fruit and becoming 
prostrate, occasionally reaching 4-5 feet in length. Leaves longer or shorter 
than the stems, flat, involute or keeled, 7;-# inch broad, striate ; margins 
more or less scabrid. Spikelets 8-5, pale brown, close together or rarely 
distant, sessile, or the lower shortly peduncled; the upper one male, 
slender, 1-2 inches long; lower female only, or sometimes with a few male 
flowers below, rarely above, short and broad, erect, }-1} inch long, 4-4 
inch broad. Bracts leafy, very long, overtopping the spikelets. Glumes 
broadly ovate, thin and membranous, bifid at the apex, with a long or short 
awn, pale brownish usually dotted with chestnut, median portion more or 
less conspicuously 8-nerved. Perigynia rather smaller than the glumes, 
very broadly ovate, plano-convex, nerved, polished and shining, purplish at 
the apex, paler below, or wholly pale brown; beak very short and broad, 
with two widely-divergent Boe margins entire or serrate above. Stig- 
mas 2.—Boott in Hook. fil. Fl. Nov. Zeal., i., 282; Hook. fil. Handbk. N.Z. 
Flora, 814. 
North and South Islands.—Abundant throughout, from the North Cape 
to Stewart Island. Altitudinal range from sea-level to 8,500 feet. 
An extremely variable plant, especially in the length of the culms, which 
in some forms hardly elongate after flowering, in others reach a length of 
from 8 to even 5 feet, lying prostrate on the ground. The description in 
the “Flora of New Zealand” is much more correct than the later one 
given in the “ Handbook,” where it is stated that the perigynia are not 
serrate above, which they very frequently are; and also that it can be dis- 
tinguished from C. raoulii by the glumes not being 2-fid—whereas they are 
almost invariably bifid in both species. It seems probable that more 
species than one have been included in the description given in the 
** Handbook.’ 
Some of the forms which I include under C. testacea should perhaps 
have been briefly characterized as varieties. For instance the lowland 
form, often common near the coast, on sand-hills, etc., differs in several 
respects from the mountain state. But I find so many intermediates that 
for the present I have thought it best to give a sufficiently wide specific 
description and to postpone actually characterizing trivial varieties until 
more is known of their range and limits. 
22. C. wakatipu, Petrie, Trans. N.Z. Institute, xiv., 363. 
South Island.—Canterbury—mountains above the Broken River, alt. 
8,500 feet; mountains above Arthur’s Pass, 4,000 feet; Lake Tekapo, alt. 
3,000-4,500 feet, T.F.C. Otago—Ben Lomond, near Queenstown, alt. 
8,000-5,000 feet ; Lake Wanaka, alt. 3,500 feet, D, Petrie! 
