380 Transactions. — Botany. 



No diagnosis of P. glauca lias yet been publislied in the colony, although 

 its discovery was announced in the first volume of our " Transactions."* 

 A short time previously it had been described in France from young culti- 

 vated specimens supposed to have been obtained in Tasmania or raised from 

 Tasmaniau seed. I now give a diagnosis drawn from fresh specimens, and 

 have added new descriptions of the other indigenous species, embodying all 

 the information I have been able to obtain respecting them. 



Phyllocladus glauca. 



Carriere, Coniferes, p. 502 ; Gordon, Pinetum, p. 140 ; Henk. and Hocbst., Nadelholz, 

 p. 173. 



Phyllocladus trichomanoides, Don ; /3. glauca, DC, Prodromns, XVI., part ii., 

 p. 498. 



A dioecious tree, 20-40 feet high, trunk 12-18 inches in diameter, 

 branches stout ; young leaves linear, glaucous beneath, crowded ; scale 

 leaves deciduous, recurved ; cladodia distichous on a rachis 5-12 inches 

 long ; one or two at the end of a branch becoming produced into true 

 branches, each developing a whorl of cladodia somewhat smaller than the 

 original. Lateral cladodia glaucous when young, exceedingly coriaceous, 

 rhomboid, or obliquely ovate-cuneate, deeply toothed or lobed ; teeth 

 obtuse. Flowers : male — amenta numerous, 10-20 at the tips of a branch, 

 on stout radiating peduncles, including the peduncles about two inches 

 long ; scales obtuse ; female — amenta distichous, shortly peduncled, 4-6 

 on each side of the lower part of a rachis ; ovoid, half-an-iuch long ; nuts 

 10-20, much compressed. 



Hah. North Island: Maungatawhui — B. Mair 1 Great Omaha (1865), 

 Great Barrier Island (1867), Cape Colville, Thames Gold Field— T. K.; 

 Wairoa (East)— TF. J. Palmer. 



This species ascends from the sea level to 2,800 feet, attaining its 

 largest dimensions in sheltered localities at the higher levels. 



This is the toa-toa of the Maoris north of the Waitemata, but accord- 

 ing to Colenso, the East Coast natives south of the Thames apply that 

 name to the next species. Settlers in the South Island often apply it to P. 

 alpina. 



Although this species is glaucous in the young state, the specific name 

 is not so appropriate as it would be to P. alpina. 



The large size of the cladodia and the many-seeded fruit at once dis- 

 tinguish this fine species from its congeners ; to these marked distinctive 

 features may be added its dioecious character and long peduncled male 

 catkins, which are more numerous than in either P. tricJiomanoides or P. 

 alpina. The female catkins are not borne on the margins of cladodia, but 

 * Trans. N.Z. Inst., I., p. 149. 



