THE VASCULAR FLORA OF MACQUARIE ISLAND.—CHEESEMAN. 
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broad, deeply striate, quite glabrous, flat or involute, margins thickened, tips obtuse, 
callous; ligules broad-ovate, thin and membranous; sheaths unusually long, much 
broader than the blades, sometimes as much as 5 mm. across, smooth, pale and mem¬ 
branous. Panicle narrow, glabrous, 2-3 cm. long; branches few, short, erect. Spikelets 
6-15, 3-5 flowered, 6-7 mm. long, the lowest flower sessile at the base of the spikelet, 
the upper usually remote from one another. Empty glumes unequal, the lower half 
to two-thirds the length of the upper, glabrous, oblong, obtuse, 3-nerved. Flowering 
glumes ovate or broadly ovate-oblong, rounded at the back, not keeled, 5-nerved, 
glabrous or very faintly pubescent on the nerves, minutely 3-toothed at the tip or 
irregularly erose. Palea broad, 2-keeled, the keels ciliolate. Lodicules 2, acute. 
H. Hamilton remarks that this is a common coastal grass, found in crevices in 
bare rock or on the cliffs. Some of his specimens are plentifully mixed with Tillcea 
moschala and Colobanthus muscoides, both of them plants common in littoral situations. 
Scraps of Callitriche antarctica are also present. Its discovery adds another species 
to the list of those endemic in Macquarie Island, of which three species are now known 
—Deschampsia penicillata, Poa Hamiltoni, and Triodia macquariensis . I trust to show 
in this memoir that this fact is not without significance when the previous history of 
the florula is considered. 
Triodia macquariensis is a puzzling plant to place. It differs from Poa 
principally in the flowering glumes being rounded on the back, and minutely 3-toothed 
(or irregularly erose) at the tip. It agrees with Atropis in the flowering glumes being 
rounded on the back, but differs in habit and in the 3-toothed tip of the flowering 
glume. Although it is not a typical Triodia, it must be kept in the vicinity of the New 
Zealand T . australis. 
Poa foltosa Hook. /. 
Poa foliosa Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. FI. (1864), p. 338, excl. var. b. ; Buch. N.Z. Grasses 
(1878), t. 42; Cheesem. Man. N.Z. FI. (1906), p. 900; Petrie in Subantarct. Islands 
of N.Z. (1909), p. 476. Festuca foliosa Hook. f. FI. Antarct. 1 (1844), p. 99, t. 55. 
Macquarie Island :—Abundant throughout the island, from sea-level to a 
considerable height on the hills. Fraser; Scott (1880); A. Hamilton (1894); H. 
Hamilton (1912-1913). 
Poa foliosa is the most important constituent of the vegetation of Macquarie 
Island, and the one which affects its physiognomy to the greatest extent. How much 
this is the case, is evident from an inspection of the illustrations of Macquarie Island 
scenery given in Sir Douglas Maws on’ s “ Home of the Blizzard” (see particularly those 
opposite pages 166, 172 and 188 of vol. 2), while additional proof can be obtained from 
the published accounts of various visitors, as Dr. Scott, Mr. A. Hamilton and several 
members of the Mawson Expedition. Speaking generally, it can be said that low-lying 
and swampy situations near the coast are almost invariably covered with a more or less 
dense growth of this species, perched on tall stools or trunks several feet in height, 
