428 Transactions. — Botany. 



Var. secta. — Larger, rootstooks often matted together and forming minia- 

 ture trunks 2-4 feet high. Panicle larger, more slender, much more com- 

 pound, often with lax drooping branches ; perigynia smaller and broader, 

 faintly nerved or quite smooth and polished. C. secta, Boott in Houk.fil. 

 Fl. Nov. Zeal., i., 283 ; III. Car., t. 123, 124. 



North and South Islands. — The varieties virgata and secta abundant 

 throughout, from the North Cape to Stewart Island, and from sea-level to 

 an altitude of over 3,000 feet. Var. appressa. — South Island.— Near Duuedin 

 and Otago Peninsula, G. M. Thomson ! D. Petrie 1 Milford Sound, Dr. 

 Hector, (i. M. Thomson. Auckland and Campbell Islands, Sir J. D. Hooker. 

 (Handbook.) 



I have followed Mr. Bentham and Sir F. Mueller in uniting the three 

 plants mentioned above with the northern C. paniculata, L. ; a course long 

 ago indicated by the sagacious Robert Brown. Small specimens of C. 

 appressa (and particularly some Tasmanian ones), are almost identical with 

 European examples ; but usually the plant differs in its larger size, stouter 

 habit, and much* longer panicles, which in 0. paniculata are seldom more 

 than 4 or 5 inches long, but in C'. appressa are sometimes over 18 inches, 

 and proportionally stout. C. virgata recedes from appressa in the narrower 

 foliage, still longer but much more slender panicles, and smaller perigynia ; 

 but transition states are occasionally seen. G. secta has drooping panicles 

 often 2 feet long, with lax spreading branches, and in its extreme form is 

 widely different from any northern variety of C. paniculata. Reduced or 

 mountain forms, however, gradually approach C. virgata, the panicles becom- 

 ing shorter, and the side branches less developed. After the study and 

 comparison of many specimens, both New Zealand and foreign, it appears to 

 me that the differences between the three varieties and between them and 

 the typical C. paniculata are mainly those of habit, size, and luxuriance, and 

 that there are no structural deviations of sufficient importance available for 

 specific distinction. 



C. paniculata is widely distributed m New Zealand, and perhaps con- 

 tributes more to the general physiognomy of the vegetation than any other 

 species of the genus. Everyone who has had occasion to pass through 

 swampy districts is familiar with the huge tussocks formed by the matted 

 rootstocks of the variety secta, sometimes from four to five feet high, with a 

 diameter of nearly two feet. Outside New Zealand, Australia and Tas- 

 mania the species ranges through Europe and Western Asia. A variety is 

 found in California, but the plant seems to be unknown in Eastern America. 



11. C. viridis, Petrie, Trans. N.Z. Inst., xiii., 332. Pale whitish-green. 

 Stems slender, wiry, tufted, terete below, compressed or plano-convex above, 

 grooved, perfectly smooth, 6-24 inches high. Leaves shorter than the 



