Armstrong. — On the Genus Oorallospartium. 333 



culm ; spikelets 6-9, few-flowered, crowded into a compound spike about 

 one inch long, and arranged alternately on the flattened rachis ; bracts 

 glume-like, scarious, linear-lanceolate, 1-3-nerved, the nerves produced into 

 a slender awn ; male flowers above few and wanting in many spikelets, 

 female below ; glumes linear-lanceolate, pale, membranous, acuminate, 

 one-nerved ; utricle linear-lanceolate, nerved, plano-convex ; beak long, 

 very narrow, tapering, 2-dentate, with two finely serrated wings ; stigmas 

 two. 



This species is close to C. kaloides, described above. Its stouter leaves, 

 small habit, and short compact head of spikelets, at once distinguish it. 



Hab. Eough Eidge, 8,000 feet ; Nevis Stream, Otago, 2,000 feet. 



Art. XLII. — On the Genus Oorallospartium. 

 By J. B. Armstrong. 

 [Bead before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 5th August, 1880.] 

 The singular Papilionaceous plant known to the settlers of Canterbury as 

 the coral broom, was included by Sir Joseph Hooker in Brown's genus 

 Carmichcelia, and described as Carmichcelia crassicaulis in his " Handbook of 

 the New Zealand Flora." Even prior to the publication of the handbook how- 

 ever, I had always doubted whether the plant was really referable to that 

 genus, and often since that time the doubt has recurred to me. I have there- 

 fore been induced to go fully into the matter whilst arranging the species of 

 Carmichalia for my work on the New Zealand flora, and having examined 

 an extensive series of specimens in the hope of being able to come to some 

 definite conclusion, I have now decided to separate the plant from that 

 genus, and to adopt for it the name Corallospartium, as the pods and flowers 

 seem to me to present as good distinctive characters as many other accepted 

 genera. Our new genus comes nearest CarmichcElia, from which it is readily 

 distinguished by the compressed one-seeded pod, splitting into two valves, 

 and the fascicled woolly flowers. As far as I have been able to ascertain, 

 the genus is in no way related to any non-New Zealand genus ; it may be 

 described as follows : — 



Corallospartium crassicaule, Armstrong. 

 Carmichcelia crassicaulis, Hk. f. 

 A straggling, erect, or sub-erect or decumbent shrub 18 inches to 3 feet 

 high, rarely more. The branches and branchlets are dark green, and 

 densely pubescent when young, glabrous and straw-coloured when old, 

 obtuse, very stout, ^-1 inch broad, terete below, much compressed above, 

 deeply channelled in parallel lines. The leaves are trifoliate or quinqui- 



