392 Transactions. — Botany. 



Aet. LIV. — Notice of the Occurrence of a Variety of Zostera nana, Roth, in 

 New Zealand. By T. Kiek, F.L.S. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 12th January, 1878.] 



Until within the last twenty years few groups of plants have received less 

 attention than the Marine Phanerogams, all the known species of which 

 belong to the Monocotyledonons Orders HydrocharidacecB and Naiadacece. A 

 complete list by Dr. Ascherson, of Berlin, appeared in 1874 in Neumayer's 

 " Anleitung in Wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Keisen," containing 

 twenty-six species arranged under eight genera.* The earliest record of 

 any species having been found in New Zealand bears date so recently as 

 1867, when a Zostera, found in a flowerless condition in many places in the 

 colony, was recorded in the "Handbook of the New Zealand Flora" as 

 Zostera marina, L. — a species of wide distribution in the northern hemis- 

 phere — but the identity of our plant must be considered uncertain in the 

 absence of flowers. I have now to record the discovery, in a flowering 

 condition, of a second species, which, notwithstanding a slight departure 

 from, the normal characters, I identify with Zostera nana, Both, and of 

 which the following is a description. 



Zostera nana, Both, var. muelleri. 

 Z. muelleri, Irmisch. 



Stem creeping, rather stout for the size of the plant, clothed with the 

 dead bases of old leaves. Leaves linear, 3-6 inches long, iV-yV i^ch wide, 

 with about six nerves on each side of a midrib formed of two nerves in 

 contact for their whole length, margin thickened ; spathes 1-4, including 

 the leafy portion 2-3 inches long, peduncles short, flattened ; spadix rarely 

 exceeding f inch in length with inflexed membranous appendages on the 

 margins ; anthers about six on each side, ovules four ; stigmas frequently 

 exserted. Fruit faintly furrowed when mature. 



Hab. North Island — Port Nicholson ; on mud flats exposed at low 

 water. 



Our plant differs from the typical form in its more robust stem, clothed 

 with the persistent bases of old leaves, leaves somewhat crowded and 

 narrower, in the short, flattened peduncles, and in the rather larger fruit 

 which agrees with the type in being famtly striated. 



In Port Nicholson it is associated with the larger plant provisionally 

 identified with Z. marina, the inflorescence of which must be sought in 

 deep water. 



* Not including Ruppia and those forms of Zannichellia and Potamogeton found in 

 salt-water lagoons. 



