822 Transactions. — Botany. 



imbricated in 7-8 rows ; outer scales large, broad-oblong, obtuse, and •with 

 peduncle clothed with lighter reddish-yellow wool ; inner scales 6-7 lines 

 long, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, acute, longitudinally ribbed, glossy 

 within ; receptacle convex, 10 lines broad, deeply and coarsely pitted ; pits 

 square, the alveolar-like ridges even, a little higher at the angles. 



Hab. Dry rocky hills, Eenwicktown, near Blenheim, South Island. 

 Mr. F. Reader. 



This is in many respects a remarkable species, and is certainly pretty 

 closely allied naturally to 0. insignis, Hook., to which South Island species 

 (unknown by sight to me) I was at first inclined to assign it, mainly through 

 my not having specimens with fully opened flowers, and from their having 

 been gathered in the known neighbouring localities of that plant. I had, 

 however, several large specimens in full leaf, and with unopened heads of 

 flowers nearly mature ; and also an old head of the former year, but without 

 a single floret remaining. On closely examining my specimens, I found 

 them to differ in so many important points (vide descrip., supra) from 0. 

 insignis, that I could hesitate no longer over them. 



Its very peculiar and curiously margined leaves, together with their 

 being subverticillate and densely clothed with coarse matted, almost floccose, 

 wool, — and the soft flexible nature of its stout compressed and bracteate 

 peduncles (which softness and flexibility they still retain in their dried 

 state), — are striking characters. 



In some particulars this plant has affinity with some of the Australian 

 species of this genus. 



Order XXVII. HALOKAGEyE. 

 Genus 3. Gunnera, Linn. 

 Gunner a strigosa, sp. nov. 



Plant low creeping, very diffuse, rooting at ends of runners and forming 

 nodes, 2-6 inches apart ; branches terete, hispid, coloured brown. Leaves 

 upright and spreading, radical from nodes, 5-14 arising from a node, 

 darkish-green, rough with minute whitish points, f inch diameter, cordate, 

 auricled, 5-nerved, which are each again forked at the tips with veinlets, 

 anastomosing, nerves red-brown and very prominent below, 5-7-lobed, 

 lobes crenate, mucronate ; petioles ^— 1 J inch long, somewhat stout, chan- 

 nelled ; strigose with flat adpressed linear white hairs, which are sub-acute 

 and apiculate, and scattered on both sides, particularly on midrib and 

 nerves petioles and runners, which are sometimes quite hoary with them. 

 Flowers monoecious on long slender scapes (or peduncles), 3-4 inches long, 

 2-3 times longer than the leaves, 2-5 scapes to a plant or single node. 

 Male flowers above in a simple spike sometimes occupying f- of length of 

 scape, produced alternately and distant; petals, 0; stamens, 2, sessile 



