﻿Kirk. — The British and New Zealand Floras compared. 251 



present a peculiar feature in the landscape, and at a distance " resemble tlie 

 nests of some gigantic bird ;" their drooping scapes of waxy-looking flowers 

 and crimson fruit being alike conspicuous and attractive. Trunks and 

 branches are laden with epiphytic orchids, small pittosporads and other shrubs, 

 ferns, pendent lycopods, and mosses, accompanied by large foliaceous lichens, 

 to an extent which completely beggars description. Scandent ferns, which 

 ascend to the tops of the highest trees present a feature totally unknown in 

 the woods of Britain, and showy loranths adom the branches with bright 

 coloured flowers strangely out of harmony with the foliage of the supporting 

 tree. The large white-flowered clematis {G. indivisa), with its massive 

 foliage covers the outskirts of the forest during two months of the year, as 

 with a sheet of purest snow ; parsonsias exhibit their twisted and inosculated 

 stems, ultimately producing jessamine-like flowers and pendent linear 

 capsules. The well-known supple-jack [Rhipogonum scandens), with its flexible 

 stems, often fills up the spaces between the trees, and renders progress both 

 tedious and laborious, while the mange-mange (Lygodium articulatum), with 

 its elegant foliage, its singular spore-cases and tough wiry stems, binds trees 

 and undergrowth together in its net-like shrouds to such an extent that the 

 traveller's path can only be cleared by the knife. Like its British allies, the 

 tataramoa [Rubus australis), with its three or four strongly marked varieties, 

 often forms impenetrable thickets, or ascending the lower shrubs by means 

 of the hooked prickles with which its leaves are armed, ultimately reaches the 

 tops of the loftiest trees, and with its cable-like stems partly coiled on the 

 ground, partly suspended in mid-air, spreads its branches far and wide, and 

 hangs its branched and elongated panicles of snowy dioecious flowers, absolutely 

 without a rival in the genus to which it belongs. Adding the beauty of 

 colour to that of form, scandent species of Metrosideros, a section almost 

 peculiar to the colony, festoon the trees with brilliant flowers of white, red, 

 magenta, and fiery crimson. How cold and sombre by the side of all this 

 wealth of form, and warmth of colour, does the solitary ivy appear ] 



I have already pointed out the remarkable paucity of showy herbaceous 

 flowers in the New Zealand forests as afibrding one of the most striking points 

 of contrast between the two Floras. Their place is occupied by a large vaiiety 

 of ferns and allied plants of exquisite form, and often of delicate texture : 

 now resembling miniature tree-ferns — now the shield ferns of Britain — of 

 varied tints, from the tender green of adiantam (A. cethiopicuin, etc.), 

 the red and purple doodia {D. media), to the black Lomaria nigra — of all 

 degrees of texture, from the filmy hymenophyllums, resembling delicate algje, 

 to the leathery todea {T. barhara) — now resembling humble mosses — now 

 exhibiting the habit of the stately para {Marattia salicina). 



In Britain Ferns and their allies form only one twenty-fifth of the Flora, 



