Cotenso.— Description of new Plants. 335 
Hab.—In dense forests near the head of the river Manawatu, North 
Island ; epiphytical on living trees, at no great height from the ground; 
1880-1881 ; flowering in December. 
This species of Astelia is very distinct from all our known New Zealand 
(and other described) species ; still, in some respects, it has affinity with 
Hamelinia veratroides of A. Richard, (a New Zealand species of this genus), 
judging from his copious description of the female plant of that species and 
his botanical drawing of the same ;* which species Dr. Sir J oseph Hooker 
has placed with a doubt, under Astelia cunninghamii, in his ‘* Handbook of 
the New Zealand Flora ;” but I do not thing it will be found to belong to it. 
Indeed I think that A. Richard’s plant,+ (collected in New Zealand by 
D’Urville and Lesson) has not been subsequently detected in this country. 
A. Cunningham, in his “ Precursor of the Botany of New Zealand,” placed 
it under A. banksti, as a synonym of that species ; I doubt, however, if 
Cunningham ever gathered it. 
Astelia spicata, n. sp. ; 
Plant small, cespitose, sub-grass-like, throwing out many young ones 
from axils of lower leaves; epiphytical on the lower bare branches of trees, 
and on prostrate trees and logs, forming small thick tufts. Leaves thickish, 
Spreading, 6-9 inches long, 3-7 lines wide, sessile, much dilated at base 
and clasping, linear-elongate, acuminate, distichous, falcate, light-green, 
almost glaucous, slightly keeled, glabrous above but slightly scurfy and 
margined (above) with a narrow silvery shining line of closely adpressed 
hairs, hoary below, much as in A. polyneuron (supra), obscurely 6-nerved, 
striated, and with short transverse veins near base, and finely ciliated with 
white hairs at margins, and on midrib below: scape (female) erect, 2 inches ~ 
long, cylindrical, succulent, and (together with pedicels) elothed with fine and 
Closely adpressed silky white hairs; spike 1} inches long, bearing 25-80 
flowers; the lowermost four, however, are distant from each other and 
Pedicelled, each one of them is also singly bracteated with a long leaf-like 
lanceolate bract, the lowermost one being 8 inches long ; the upper flowers 
are subsessile, clustered in a dense cylindrical obtuse spike ; a few only of 
the lower ones are free on very short pedicels, each one having a subulate 
reddish bracteole, 6-9 lines long, hanging downwards from its base : 
Perianth free half-way down, white, shining, very membraneous, semi- 
tansparent ; lobes long, oblong-ovate, obtuse, thickened at tips, and one- 
herved, at first completely enclosing the ovary, though open and gaping at 
the sides ; afterwards they are wholly reeurved from the centre of the same, 
Which is still embraced closely below by the tube, when the whole sseumes - 
ee Botanique, “‘ Voy. de L’Astrolabe,” t. 24. 
t Astelia richardi, Endl., apud Kunth, Enum. Plant., vol. iii., p. 365. 
