38 RECORDS OF OBSERVATIONS ON SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR ’S 
Festuca ovina; Linné, species plantarum 73 (1758). 
In the highest region of the Owen Stanley’s Ranges. 
This grass varies there from some few inches to nearly two feet in height, 
according to the situations, which it occupies. From the copious supply of specimens 
it may be assumed, that it is frequent there. What Mr. Buchanan figured as 
F. scoparia, seems to approach closely to F. ovina. Some forms from this new 
locality come near F’. erecta. The species is particularly well given in Stebler and 
Schroeter’s ‘‘ Futter Pflanzen ” p. 21-26 t. 20 (1884). Prof. Hackel has devoted in 
his admirable ‘‘ Monographia festucarum Huropearum ” p. 82-118 to the elucidation 
of F. ovina in its European forms, to which still other varieties might be added from 
extra-Huropean countries. : 
Festuca pusilla ; Banks and Solander according to J. Hooker, Flor Antarctica I, 380 
(1847). 
Culminations of the Owen Stanley’s Ranges. 
Inasmuch as some other far southern plants of the Western Hemisphere have 
been found now also in the Papuan Highlands, I less hesitate in referring one of the 
small tufted grasses from there to the above-named species and to what appears to be 
a still dwarfer state of it, namely Poa (or Triodia) Kerguelensis. Sir Joseph Hooker’s 
description and Mr. W. Fitch’s drawing are well applicable also to our plant, unless 
the fruit-supporting bracts are (Poa-like) more compressed, more carinated and 
devoid of denticles. Further notes on it occur in the extra-volume of the Philos. 
Transact. of the Royal Soc. for 1879, where also, as concerning us or this occasion, 
is alluded to Agrostis Magellanica. In the Handbook of the New Zealand Flora I, 
341, an opinion however is expressed, that the American plant may be a small form 
of Festuca scoparia. At the least sheltered spots ours is reduced to a height of about 
two inches, forming particularly compact patches. The spikelets are frequently one- 
flowered, when this species may be easily mistaken for an Agrostis, just as in the 
case of Poa uniflora. Sometimes the leaves are placed so distichously, as to give to 
the plant the appearance of an Oreobolus. The taller form of this grass resembles 
some states of Festuca ovina. A monstrous state occurs, in which the fruit- 
supporting bract becomes elongated pointed and uncinated, somewhat in the manner 
of an often similar abnormal growth in Poa alpina, and particularly like the hooked 
end of bracts not infrequent in Hemarthria compressa. 
Another Festuca grows on the highest tops of the Owen Stanley's Ranges, where 
it forms small cushion-like patches; its leaves are very short and narrow, rigid, 
shining, often pale and somewhat arched, longitudinally involute and almost 
pungently acute; the spikelets are quite small, two or three-flowered, singly 
terminating very short stalks, and thus much concealed among the leaves ; the outer 
