Species of Xeronema — Moore 
361 
with affinities with New Caledonia) growing 
on Hen and Chickens and Three Kings Is- 
lands but not on Poor Knights and other 
intermediate groups. The recent discoveries 
on Three Kings of Plectomirtha baylisiana 
(Anacardiaceae) and Tecomanthe speciosa (Big- 
noniaceae) (Oliver, 1948: 224, 233), repre- 
senting families not otherwise known in the 
New Zealand flora, and of the new genus 
Elingamita (Myrsinaceae) (Baylis, 1951: 99- 
102), illustrate also how important these off- 
shore islands are from the point of view of 
plant geography. The cliff habitat of X. callis- 
temon should save it from fire which is the 
worst menace to these significant but vulner- 
able vegetation remnants. 
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON X. Callistemon 
Cockayne (1928: 73) places X. callistemon 
in the highest class from a horticultural stand- 
point. Although it is not yet listed by nursery- 
men it is grown in many gardens and has 
flowered as far south as Nelson. At the Royal 
Botanic Gardens, Kew, plants had been es- 
tablished by 1938 and the species flowered 
there for the first time in 1953. Garden plants 
have provided useful supplementary informa- 
tion about this rare species. 
In Hatea Street, Whangarei (30 miles south 
of the Poor Knights Islands), at the home of 
the late Mrs. A. R. Pickmere, X callistemon 
has been grown in pots and in open ground 
since 1924, flowering first in 1932, and the 
original plants are still thriving in 1956. These 
plants set good seed and some details of 
germination and growth rate have been re- 
corded from them (Cranwell and Moore, 
1938; 27). A seedling from the first flowering 
has bloomed at Te Aroha at the age of 22 
years. Dr. W. R. B. Oliver has a plant in a 
sandy coastal garden at Seatoun, Wellington, 
North Island, brought from Poor Knights in 
1933 by Cranwell and Moore; this has pro- 
duced flowers regularly since 1942, with a 
maximum number of 16 inflorescences in 
1951 and a total in nine recorded years of 48 
flower heads. Seeds from this plant have been 
successfully germinated. 
Miss E. K. Pickmere pointed out in 1942 
(in litt.) that amongst plants from Poor 
Knights Islands two distinct forms can be 
recognized at flowering, and particularly at 
bud stage, though vegetatively all are alike. 
The difference lies in the floral bracts which 
in most of the plants under observation in the 
garden are definitely longer than the pedicel, 
exceeding the bud length, and are green at 
the time the flowers open (Fig. 4A, of BD 
50094A 4 ); in other plants, as in Dr. Oliver’s 
(and in X. moorei ), the bracts are barely as 
long as the pedicels and are red and scarious 
from the beginning (e.g., BD 50094B). In 
two plants, both from the southern island of 
Poor Knights and growing in one pot, bracts 
were measured in 1943; larger bracts on basal, 
middle and upper flowers were 4.5, 1.5, and 
0.7 cm. long while smaller ones were 1.3, 1, 
and 0.5 cm. long respectively. The difference 
has been maintained in these garden plants 
over many years and in the one case where 
flowers of a seedling have been compared 
with those of its parent both are short- 
bracted. Two published colour pictures of 
this species suggest the difference though 
neither does the plant full justice. In a paint- 
ing of a partly opened inflorescence (Laing 
and Blackwell, 1940, unnumbered) the longer 
green bracts are perhaps overemphasized; a 
colour photograph (N. Z. Gardener, 1954, 
Colour Supplement) shows a raceme at the 
stage where bracts begin to wither, but this 
appears to be of the short-bracted kind. 
Garden plants have also provided material 
for an anatomical study (Mueller, 1928) of 
root, stem, and leaf. The cytological and em- 
bryological work required to make a detailed 
comparison between this genus and others in 
the subfamily Asphodeloideae (Cave, 1953: 
142) awaits attention. 
SUMMARY 
Fresh material of X. moorei Brong. et Gris 
4 Number in the Herbarium of the Botany Division, 
D.S.I.R., New Zealand. 
