Cotenso.—On new Plants. 863 
involucre having a small linear bracteole close to its base; pappus nume- 
rous, white, pointed, not thickened at top, longer than involucre and shorter 
than the ray flowers ; achenium (immature) glabrous, plain, not costate ; 
peduncles from rhachis 1-2 inches long, always bearing an oblong obtuse bract 
close to their bases; pedicels 2-4 lines long, slender, generally with a linear 
bracteole at base or about the middle of pedicel, and mostly ending dichoto- 
mously with two heads of flowers; rhachis, peduncles, pedicels, involucres, 
and petioles, thickly covered with red-brown woolly tomentum. 
Hab.—Dry forests, “ Forty-mile Bush," head of the River Manawatu; 
1876-1878. 
This plant is, no doubt, closely allied to O. cunninghamii, Hook., but 
differing in its peculiar strigose hoary leaves, and their several curious 
colours, and sharp apiculated teeth, in their veinlets branching from the mid- 
rib at right angles, and in its pointed pappus. I have more than once thought, 
that Sir J. D. Hooker may have included more than one species of 
Olearia under O. cunninghamii in his “ Handbook of New Zealand Flora.” 
The type of that species (Brachyglottis rani), discovered and described by 
Cunningham, is a northern plant (Cunningham originally found it north of 
the Bay of Islands), and I have never met with it in these parts. But be 
that as it may, this species is neither Cunningham's plant nor the O. cunning- 
hamii of Hooker. It is common in the “ Forty-mile Bush” forest, and when 
in full flower in summer is a graceful and conspicuous object, always de- 
lighting the eye of the traveller that way with its striking masses of white 
blossoms. Curiously enough this plant does not flower every year. It 
flowered most abundantly in 1878, but in 1879 not a single shrub could I 
detect bearing any flowers! 
It has been named colorata from the four colours of its leaves and 
petioles; the upper side of the leaf, when denuded of its hoary hairs, is 
peculiar light green, below the blade is whitish with a slight tinge of pis 
or light brown, while the mid-rib and larger veins are light reddish-brown, 
and the petioles and branchlets are a still darker shade of rich red-brown. 
All this is very constant and apparent, at first sight, in its living state. Its 
leaves are also frequently further discoloured through being punctured and 
gnawed by insects. 
DicksonIA SPARMANNIANA. 
Plant terrestrial, cespitose, sub-erect, many-fronded, rhizome or root- 
stalk rising only a few inches above ground, and in some few instances 
apparently shortly coalescent. Stipe very short, 6-9 inches, densely clothed 
throughout with long hairs; hairs 2 inches long, shining, chesnut-brown, 
articulated and moniliform their whole length; rhachises densely woolly and 
hairy with light brown, patent, glandular hairs; stipe and main-rhachis 
