484 Transactions. — Botany , 



21. C. testacea, Sol. mss. — Steins tufted, slender, leafy, nearly smooth, 

 from 4 to 18 inches high, in some forms elongating in fruit and becoming 

 prostrate, occasionally reaching 4-5 feet in length. Leaves longer or shorter 

 than the stems, flat, involute or keeled, xV _ i mcn Droa( l, striate ; margins 

 more or less scabrid. Spikelets 3-5, pale brown, close together or rarely 

 distant, sessile, or the lower shortly peduncled ; the upper one male, 

 slender, J-2 inches long; lower female only, or sometimes with a few male 

 flowers below, rarely above, short and broad, erect, J-l£ inch long, J-£ 

 inch broad. Bracts leafy, very long, overtopping the spikelets. Glumes 

 broadly ovate, thin and membranous, bifid at the apex, with a long or short 

 awn, pale brownish usually dotted with chestnut, median portion more or 

 less conspicuously 3-nerved. Perigynia rather smaller than the glumes, 

 very broadly ovate, plano-convex, nerved, polished and shining, purplish at 

 the apex, paler below, or wholly pale brown ; beak very short and broad, 

 with two widely- divergent teeth ; margins entire or serrate above. Stig- 

 mas 2. — Boott in Hook.fil. Fl. Nov. Zeal., i., 282 ; Hook.fil. Handbk. N.Z. 

 Flora, 314. 



North and South Islands. — Abundant throughout, from the North Cape 

 to Stewart Island. Altitudinal range from sea-level to 3,500 feet. 



An extremely variable plant, especially in the length of the culms, which 

 in some forms hardly elongate after flowering, in others reach a length of 

 from 3 to even 5 feet, lying prostrate on the ground. The description in 

 the "Flora of New Zealand" is much more correct. than the later one 

 given in the " Handbook," where it is stated that the perigynia are not 

 serrate above, which they very frequently are ; and also that it can be dis- 

 tinguished from C. raoulii by the glumes not being 2-fid — whereas they are 

 almost invariably bifid in both species. It seems probable that more 

 species than one have been included in the description given in the 

 " Handbook." 



Some of the forms which I include under C. testacea should perhaps 

 have been briefly characterized as varieties. For instance the lowland 

 form, often common near the coast, on sand-hills, etc., differs in several 

 respects from the mountain state. But I find so many intermediates that 

 for the present I have thought it best to give a sufficiently wide specific 

 description and to postpone actually characterizing trivial varieties until 

 more is known of their range and limits. 



22. C. wakatipu, Petrie, Trans. X.Z. Institute, xiv., 363. 



South Island. — Canterbury — mountains above the Broken Kiver, alt. 

 3,500 feet ; mountains above Arthur's Pass, 4,000 feet ; Lake Tekapo, alt. 

 3,000-4,500 feet, T.F.C. Otago — Ben Lomond, near Qusenstown, alt. 

 3,000-5,000 feet ; Lake Wanaka, alt. 3,500 feet, D. Petrie ! 



