CoLENSO. — Description of new Plants. 335 



Hab. — In clense forests near the liead of the river Manawatu, North 

 Island ; epiphytical on living trees, at no great height from the ground ; 

 1880-1881 ; flowering in December. 



This species of Astelia is very distinct from all our known New Zealand 

 (and other described) species ; still, in some respects, it has affinity with 

 Hamelinia veratroides of A. Eichard, (a New Zealand species of this genus), 

 judging from his copious description of the female plant of that species and 

 his botanical drawing of the same ;* which species Dr. Sir Joseph Hooker 

 has placed with a doubt, under Astelia cumiinghamii, in his " Handbook of 

 the New Zealand Flora ;" but I do not thing it will be found to belong to it. 

 Indeed I think that A. Eichard's plant, t (collected in New Zealand by 

 D'Urville and Lesson) has not been subsequently detected in this country. 

 A. Cunningham, in his " Precursor of the Botany of New Zealand," placed 

 it under A. banksii, as a synonym of that species ; I doubt, however, if 

 Cunningham ever gathered it. 

 Astelia spicata, n. sp. 



Plant small, csespitose, sub-grass-like, throwing out many young ones 

 from axils of lower leaves ; epiphytical on the lower bare branches of trees, 

 and on prostrate trees and logs, forming small thick tufts. Leaves thickish, 

 spreading, 6-9 inches long, 3-7 lines wide, sessile, much dilated at base 

 and clasping, linear-elongate, acuminate, distichous, falcate, light-green, 

 almost glaucous, slightly keeled, glabrous above but slightly scurfy and 

 margined (above) with a narrow silvery shining hue of closely adpressed 

 hairs, hoary below, much as in A. polyneuron (supra ), obscurely 6-nerved, 

 striated, and with short transverse veins near base, and finely cihated with 

 white hairs at margins, and on midrib below : scape (female) erect, 2 inches 

 long, cylindrical, succulent, and (together with pedicels) clothed with fine and 

 closely adpressed silky white hairs ; spike H inches long, bearing 25-80 

 flowers ; the lowermost four, however, are distant from each other and 

 pedicelled, each one of them is also singly bracteated with a long leaf-like 

 lanceolate bract, the lowermost one being 3 inches long ; the upper flowers 

 are subsessile, clustered in a dense cylindrical obtuse spike ; a few only of 

 the lower ones are free on very short pedicels, each one having a subulate 

 reddish bracteole, 6-9 lines long, hanging downwards from its base : 

 perianth free half-way down, white, shining, very membraneous, semi- 

 transparent ; lobes long, oblong-ovate, obtuse, thickened at tips, and one- 

 nerved, at first completely enclosing the ovary, though open and gaping at 

 the sides ; afterwards they are wholly recurved from the centre of the same, 

 which is still embraced closely below by the tube, when the whole assumes 



* Atlas Botanique, " Voy. de L' Astrolabe," t. 24. 

 t Astelia richardi, Endl., apud Kunth, Enum. Plant., vol. iii., p. 365. 



