II.— BOTANY. 



Art. XXIV. — On the Flowering Plants of Stewart Island. 

 By T. Kirk, F.L.S. 

 [Read before the Southland Institute, 9th December, 1884.] 

 Until within the last five or six years botanists have been almost entirely 

 ignorant of the flora of Stewart Island, our knowledge being restricted to 

 about a dozen flowering plants and a similar number of mosses and Hepaticas 

 collected by Dr. Lyall in 1848-49, recorded in the Handbook of the New 

 Zealand Flora. Of late years, however, this reproach has been removed by 

 the labours of several collectors whose work may be briefly mentioned. 



Mr. Charles Traill has done a large amount of good work in the investiga- 

 tion of the flora and fauna of the island : I am specially indebted to him for 

 dried specimens of about 200 species of flowering plants and ferns, accom- 

 panied in many cases by valuable notes on their habits and distribution, as 

 well as the native names in use on Stewart Island. Mr. and Mrs. A. W. 

 Traill have most kindly formed for me a copious collection of the plants of 

 Euapuke Island, numbering about 140 species, several of which have not 

 been observed on Stewart Island proper. Mr. W. Pearson, Commissioner 

 of Crown Lands, has laid me under obligations for numerous dried plants 

 collected in out-of-the-way places during several visits to the island. 



In 1870 Professor Black, of the Otago University, visited the island, on 

 the part of the Otago Provincial Government, for the purpose of investigat- 

 ing its natural productions, but no plants of special interest were obtained. 

 Mr. G. M. Thomson has, I believe, paid several visits to Stewart Island, 

 during which he collected the new species of Brachycome, to which his name 

 is attached, and Myrsine chathamica, previously known on the Chatham 

 Islands only ; he also collected between thirty and forty species of ferns, with 

 other plants of interest. In 1880 he was accompanied by Mr. D. Petrie, 

 who read a valuable paper on the flora of Stewart Island before the Otago 

 Institute, and gave a catalogue of 200 flowering plants observed by him, 

 this being the first published account of the plants of the island.* During 

 this expedition Actinotus bellidioides and Liparophyllum gannii were added 

 to the New Zealand flora, a matter of great interest, as previously they were 

 only known as indigenous to Tasmania, where they are extremely rare. In 



*Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol, xiii., p. 323, 



