Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 3.djvu/324

 for the advanced period of the season at which these observations were made.

Several feeders empty themselves into the Waikato, more especially on its western bank; most of these are of tortuous course, running for many miles among the hills. A description of the chief features of the Opuatia Creek, which was explored for twenty-five miles from its mouth, may be taken as a general representation of those of other creeks. The first five or six miles passes through extensive raupo swamps, occasionally relieved by large patches of New Zealand fiax and various sedges; on the margins of quiet reaches, Riccia fluitans, previously known as a New Zealand plant only in deep water in the Wairarapa Valley, is occasionally found, but is by no means common. Large kahikatea swamps were relieved by a dense undergrowth of various species of Coprosma, which, at this late period of the season, atoned for the absence of flowers by their brilliant show of berries of orange, purple, crimson, white, red; and jet black; the effect being enhanced by the immense panicles of snow-white berries of the ti (Cordyline australis), and, high above all, the bright red fruit of the kahikatea, which were produced in unusual abundance. Asplenium australe, Br., one of the few New Zealand plants which evince a decided geognostic preference, was abundant in marshy woods on the impure limestone through which the stream has forced its way. Alluvial ground along the entire course of the creek is covered with European docks, of so dense a growth that it is difficult to force one's way through them, and the common water-cress (Nasturtium officinale) is abundant; for some fifteen miles, the only fluviatile plants were the Potamogetons before mentioned. In the low woods, Plagianthus betulinus, one of the most ornamental trees in the flora, was common, but except on dry ground had lost most of its leaves. It deserves to be largely used for ornamental planting; in habit it is the best representative we have of the European birch, its foliage closely resembling the var. laciniata of that well known tree.

But the most remarkable feature was the immense abundance, in one or two localities, of a peculiar group of plants for the most part members of widely separated families, but agreeing in the production of minute, usually diœcious, flowers, and so closely similar in foliage, and often in ramification, as to be distingiiished only with extreme difficulty in the absence of fruit. Acres were covered with a dense intertwined growth of Panax anomalum, Pennantia corymbosa, Melicytus micranthus, Myrsine divaricata, Coprosma, sps., Epicarpurus microphyllus, Mulhenbeckia complexa, and young states of Elæocarpus Hookerianus;—one of the most curious assemblages of plants similar in external appearance, but widely different in structure, that could possibly be met with.

The young leaves of Panax anomala have hitherto escaped notice; in this locality they were usually trifoliolate, and irregularly lobed and toothed, resembling those of Melicope simplex, but of more irregular form. They