L. A. Cockayne. 43 
ON THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE 
OF A NEW CHARACTER IN AN INDIVIDUAL OF 
LEPTOSPERMUM SCOPARIUM. 
By L. Cockayne, Ph.D. 
J EPTOSPERMUM SCOPARIUM is what is called a variable 
species, that is, the systematic description does not define 
any distinct and recognizable form existing in Nature, but rather 
a whole host of plants differing much in habit, flowers and foliage. 
This species is very common in nearly all parts of the New Zealand 
botanical region, and it is also considered identical with a series of 
forms belonging to Tasmania and Australia. In New Zealand, at 
the present time, it occupies vast tracts of country, usually barren. 
It presents also the interesting, and but seldom observed phenome¬ 
non, of an indigenous plant becoming a “ weed ” in its own 
area. 1 This shows that the species is eminently adapted to changes 
of environment, 2 and it is just from such that modifications in one 
direction or another might be expected. 
The flowers are produced in great numbers and at nearly all 
seasons of the year. They are white in colour, and so distinctly 
conspicuous that the close-growing shrubs, when in full bloom, 
look as if densely powdered with snow. Also, the plant is one of 
the few well-known to the settlers, so that any distinct change in 
colour of the blossoms could not fail to attract notice. 
But notwithstanding that the flowers are normally white, 
individuals possessing them more or less deeply stained with pink in 
some of their parts are occasionally met with ; in fact I have observed 
a distinct variety in the north of the North Island of New Zealand, 
where it is abundant, whose flowers are invariably stained with 
pale pink. Also a pink form was figured in the “Art Album of the 
New Zealand Flora” in 1889, and the statement is there made 
(p. 156) that “bushes are found in some localities bearing rose- 
pink flowers.” 
In most of the pink forms which I have seen the colour is 
confined to the base or the claw of the petals, the segments of the 
1 Cockayne, L. “New Zealand Indigenous Plants as Weeds.” 
The Canterbury Agric. and Past. Ass. Journ., Vol. VII., p. 
116 , 1905 . 
2 It grows on dunes, dry clayey hill sides, faces of cliffs, stony 
river beds and terraces, bogs, swamps, soil saturated with 
sulphur, etc. near “ Solfataras,” and also on good soil. 
