392 - Transactions.—Botany. 
Arr. LIV.—Notice of the Occurrence of a Variety of Zostera nana, Roth, in 
New Zealand. By T. Krz, F.L.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 12th January, 1878.] 
Unt within the last twenty years few groups of plants have received less 
attention than the Marine Phanerogams, all the known species of which 
belong to the Monocotyledonous Orders Hydrocharidacee and Naiadacee. A 
complete list by Dr. Ascherson, of Berlin, appeared in 1874 in Neumayer's 
* Anleitung in Wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen," containing 
. twenty-six species arranged under eight genera.* The earliest record of 
any species having been found in New Zealand bears date so recently as 
1867, when a Zostera, found in a flowerless condition in many places in the 
colony, was recorded in the ‘‘ Handbook of the New Zealand Flora" as 
Zostera marina, L.—a species of wide distribution in the northern hemis- 
phere—but the identity of our plant must be considered uncertain in the 
absence of flowers. I have now to record the discovery, in a flowering 
condition, of a second species, which, notwithstanding a slight departure 
from the normal characters, I identify with Zostera nana, Roth, and of 
which the following is a description. 
Zostera nana, Roth, var. muelleri. 
Z. muelleri, Irmisch. 
Stem creeping, rather stout for the size of the plant, clothed with the 
dead bases of old leaves. Leaves linear, 8-6 inches long, ,,—}, inch wide, 
with about six nerves on each side of a midrib formed of two nerves in 
contact for their whole length, margin thickened ; spathes 1—4, including 
the leafy portion 2-3 inches long, peduncles short, flattened; spadix rarely 
exceeding } inch in length with inflexed membranous appendages on the 
margins; anthers about six on each side, ovules four; stigmas frequently 
exserted. Fruit faintly furrowed when mature. 
Hab. North Island — Port Nicholson; on mud flats exposed at low 
water. 
Our plant differs from the typical form in its more robust stem, clothed 
with the persistent bases of old leaves, leaves somewhat crowded and 
narrower, in the short, flattened peduncles, and in the rather larger fruit 
which agrees with the type in being faintly striated. 
In Port Nicholson it is associated with the larger plant provisionally 
identified with Z. marina, the inflorescence of which must be sought in 
deep water. 
..* Not including Ruppia and those forms of Zannichellia and Potamogeton found in 
