822 Transactions.— Botany. 
imbrieated in 7-8 rows; outer scales large, broad-oblong, obtuse, and with 
peduncle clothed with lighter reddish-yellow wool; inner scales 6—7 lines 
long, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, acute, longitudinally ribbed, glossy 
within ; receptacle convex, 10 lines broad, deeply and coarsely pitted ; pits 
square, the alveolar-like ridges even, a little higher at the angles. 
- Hab. Dry rocky hills, Renwicktown, near Blenheim, South Island. 
Mr. F. Reader. 
This is in many respects a remarkable species, and is certainly pretty 
closely allied naturally to O. insignis, Hook., to which South Island species 
(unknown by sight to me) I was at first inclined to assign it, mainly through 
my not having specimens with fully opened flowers, and from their having 
been gathered in the known neighbouring localities of that plant. I had, 
however, several large specimens in full leaf, and with unopened heads of 
flowers nearly mature; and also an old head of the former year, but without 
a single floret remaining. On closely examining my specimens, I found 
them to differ in so many important points (vide descrip., supra) from O. 
insignis, that I could hesitate no longer over them. 
Its very peculiar and curiously margined leaves, together with their 
being subverticillate and densely clothed with coarse matted, almost floccose, 
wool,—and the soft flexible nature of its stout compressed and bracteate 
peduncles (which softness and flexibility they stil retain in their dried 
state),—are striking characters. 
In some particulars this plant has affinity with some of the Australian 
species of this genus. 
Orver XXVII. HALORAGEA. 
Genus 83. Gunnera, Linn. 
Gunnera strigosa, sp. nov. 
Plant low creeping, very diffuse, rooting at ends of runners and forming 
nodes, 2-6 inches apart; branches terete, hispid, coloured brown. Leaves 
upright and spreading, radical from nodes, 5-14 arising from a node, 
darkish-green, rough with minute whitish points, $ inch diameter, cordate, 
auricled, 5-nerved, which are each again forked at the tips with veinlets, 
anastomosing, nerves red-brown and very prominent below, 5-7-lobed, 
lobes crenate, mucronate; petioles 4-1} inch long, somewhat stout, chan- 
nelled ; strigose with flat adpressed linear white hairs, which are sub-acute 
and apiculate, and scattered on both sides, particularly on midrib and 
nerves petioles and runners, which are sometimes quite hoary with them. 
Flowers monccious on long slender scapes (or peduncles), 8-4 inches long, 
2-3 times longer than the leaves, 2-5 scapes to a plant or single node. 
Male flowers above in a simple spike sometimes occupying § of length of 
scape, produced alternately and distant; petals, 0; stamens, 2, sessile 
