South Island: Canterbury—Swamps in the Broken River basin, Enys! Kirk! T. F. C.; Tasman Valley, T. F. C. Otago—Mount Cardrona, Petrie! Altitudinal range from 2000 to 5000 ft.
I am indebted to Mr. Enys for an instructive series of specimens, all collected in one locality, showing passage-forms of leaves, from trilobate with entire lobes to trifoliolate with almost multifid leaflets. In Mr. Petrie's Mount Cardrona plant the leaves are trilobate, with the lobes entire or toothed, and the habit is somewhat dilferent; but it is in young flower only, and more advanced specimens are required to prove its exact position with respect to the typical state.
31. R. pachyrrhizus, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 8.—Small, stout, much depressed, ionning dense patches seldom more than 1½ in. high, more or less clothed with long soft hairs. Rootstock stout, fleshy, creeping, branched; rootlets thick and stringy. Leaves crowded at the ends of the divisions of the rootstock, all radical, small, somewhat fleshy; petioles stout, flattened, ¼–½ in. long; blade ¼–¾ in. diain., cuneate or obovate-cuneate, with 3–5 acute or obtuse teeth or lobes. Scape short, stout, 1-flowered, ¼–1 in. high. Flowers ½–¾ in. diam. Sepals 5, silky, linear-oblong, membranous. Petals 8–15, linear-obovate, with 1 or sometimes 3 glands a little distance above the base. Receptacle hairy. Achenes forming a globose head ⅓ in. diam., turgid, rounded, glabrous or with a few long weak hairs; style stout, subulate.—Kirk, Students' Fl. 19.
South Island: Otago—Lake district. Hector and Buchanan! Old Man Range, Hector Mountains, Mount Pisa, Mount Cardrona, Mount Tyndall, Petrie! Altitudinal range 4000–7000 ft. January–March.
A singular little plant, of very peculiar habit and appearance. It is not allied to any other species of the creeping section of the genus, and would perhaps have been better placed in the vicinity of R. sericophyllus.
32. R. macropus, Hook. f. in Hook. Ic. Plant, t. 634.—Perfectly glabrous, smooth and succulent, 6–18 in. high. Stems long, fistulose, creeping and rooting at the nodes. Radical leaves on petioles varying in length from 4–18 in.; blade 1–2½ in. in diam., semicircular, flabellate or reniform in outline, 3–5-partite to the base; leaflets broad or narrow-cuneate, more or less deeply and irregularly lobed or cut, lobes toothed at the tips. Flowering-stem about as long as the radical leaves, bearing 2 or 3 small cauline leaves, opposite to each of which springs a long or short 1-flowered peduncle. Flowers small, seldom more than ½ in. diam. Sepals 5, oblong or obovate. Petals 5, longer or shorter than the sepals; gland basilar. Achenes forming a small globose head, turgid, glabrous; style long, subulate.—Handb. N.Z. Fl. 7; Kirk, Students' Fl. 17. R. longipetiolatus. Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxv. (1893) 325.
