CoLENso. — On new Plants, 363 



involucre having a small linear bracteole close to its base ; paiypiis nume- 

 rous, white, pointed, not thickened at top, longer than involucre and shorter 

 than the ray flowers ; achenium (immature) glabrous, plain, not costate ; 

 peduncles fi'omrhachis 1-2 inches long, always bearing an oblong obtuse bract 

 close to their bases ; pedicels 2-4 hnes long, slender, generally with a linear 

 bracteole at base or about the middle of pedicel, and mostly ending dichoto- 

 mously with two heads of flowers ; rhachis, peduncles, pedicels, involucres, 

 and petioles, thickly covered with red-brown woolly tomentum. 



Hah. — Dry forests, " Forty-mile Bush," head of the River Manawatu ; 

 1876-1878. 



This plant is, no doubt, closely alUed to 0. cimningJiamii, Hook., but 

 differing in its peculiar strigose hoary leaves, and their several curious 

 colours, and sharp apiculated teeth, in their veinlets branching from the mid- 

 rib at right angles, and in its pointed pappus. I have more than once thought, 

 that Sir J. D. Hooker may have included more than one species of 

 Olearia under 0. cunninghamii in his " Handbook of New Zealand Flora." 

 The type of that species [Br achy glottis rani), discovered and described by 

 Cunningham, is a northern plant (Cunningham originally found it north of 

 the Bay of Islands), and I have never met with it in these parts. But be 

 that as it may, this species is neither Cunningham's plant nor the 0. cunning- 

 hamii of Hooker. It is common in the "Forty-mile Bush" forest, and when 

 in full flower in summer is a graceful and conspicuous object, always de- 

 lighting the eye of the traveller that way with its striking masses of white 

 blossoms. Curiously enough this plant does not flower every year. It 

 flowered most abundantly in 1878, but in 1879 not a single shrub could I 

 detect bearing any flowers ! 



It has been named colorata from the four colours of its leaves and 

 petioles ; the upper side of the leaf, when denuded of its hoary hairs, is a 

 peculiar light green, below the blade is whitish with a slight tinge of ochre 

 or light brown, while the mid-rib and larger veins are light reddish-brown, 

 and the petioles and branchlets are a still darker shade of rich red-brown. 

 AU this is very constant and apparent, at first sight, in its living state. Its 

 leaves are also frequently further discoloured through being punctured and 

 gnawed by insects. 



DiCKSONIA SPAKMANNIANA. 



Plant terrestrial, csespitose, sub-erect, many-fronded, rhizome or root- 

 stalk rising only a few inches above ground, and in some few instances 

 apparently shortly coalescent. Stipe very short, 6-9 inches, densely clothed 

 throughout with long hairs ; hairs 2 inches long, shining, chesnut-brown, 

 articulated and moniliform their whole length ; rhachises densely woolly and 

 hairy with light brown, patent, glandular hairs ; stipe and main-rhachis 



