346 Transactions.— Botany. 
A most minute plant, and easily overlooked, although probably abun- 
dant in wet places at high altitudes. 
Dracophyllum muscoides, Hook. fil. 
Handb. N.Z. Flora, vol. i., p. 183. 
A small, rigid, densely-branched shrub. Branches closely covered with 
minute, imbricate leaves. Leaves ;4, inch long, ovate, obtuse when young, 
inflexed and subulate at top when mature, coriaceous, sheathing at base, 
and minutely ciliate. Flower white, 4 inch long, terminal, sepals ovate, as 
long as corolla tube. 
Hab.—South Island: Mount Alta and Hector’s Col, 5-7,000 feet alt.— 
Hector and Buchanan, 1862; Buchanan and McKay, 1881. 
Plate XXVI., fig. 3, plant nat. size; 8 a, flowering branch, enlarged ; 
3b, sepal; 3 ¢, leaf, showing the early ovate and later subulate forms. 
This beautiful little alpine is worthy of attention as an ornamental 
plant for gardens, and probably under cultivation the close habit of growth 
might open out and produce a finer shrub. 
Aciphylla hectori, Buch., n.s. 
Stem 10-12 inches high, deeply grooved. Leaves all radical, sheathing 
near the root and forming a circle 6-8 inches diameter, pinnate, 3-5-foliate, 
leaflets 14-2} inches long, 1-4 inch broad, rigid, smooth, margins finely 
serrulate, pungent, striate. Male inflorescence racemose, occupying three- 
quarters of the stem, and with a 3-foliate stem-leaf at the base. Flowering 
bracts with large sheaths, 1-8 inches long, 8-foliate, soft, and membraneous, 
each bract enfolding a small spike of male flowers. Female racemes rigid, 
occupying less than the half of the stem, bracts 4-1 inch long, 3-foliolate, 
sheaths very small. Carpels 3-5-winged. 
Allied to Aciphylla colensoi, and may be considered as its alpine repre- 
sentative. Collected near Hector’s Col on the Mount Aspiring range, 
at 5,000 feet alt. Named in compliment to Dr. Hector, who accomplished 
the passage in 1862. 
Plate XXVIL., fig. 1, spike of male plant; 1’, ee enlarged; 2 
female es in ceed; 8; seed, front view ; 8, seed, side view 
