Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Mt Auckland, Glorit. Type: AK 108769(1), R. and J. Beever, 24/12/1962. Other known localities, all in the Auckland district, are: Waipoua River, 28/1/1955, E. Kulka. Kirk's Bush, Papakura, Jan. 1967, J. Horsman. Kaukapakapa, L. H. Moore, Feb. 1967 and some 2 miles distant, Jan. 1968.

Plant at fl. c. 3–20 cm. tall. Rhizome 3–5 mm. diam., much branched, bearing tufts of long, fine, colourless hairs, and vestigial scale-lvs. Stem erect and unbranched, pale rose colour, glandular-pubescent. Scale-lvs 1–7, c. 1–1.5 cm. long, paler than stem, many-nerved, those lower on the stem half-tubular, those higher up open-sheathed. Floral bracts similar, > very short pedicels. Fls us. 1–5, suberect. Per. c. 6 mm. long, brownish with white tips, ± glandular-pubescent externally. Dorsal sepal ± oblong, slightly concave; laterals similar, ± spreading. Petals similar, wholly included. Labellum sessile, almost orbicular to broad-oblong, ± embracing column; base broad, very slightly pouched, bearing on each side several fleshy hairs or elongated calli; median line thickened; sides becoming thick, fleshy and stiff towards tip and tuberculate externally; margins inturned, thin and membr.; mid-lobe very small, orbicular, deeply concave. Column almost as tall as labellum, subcylindric below with very narrow wings; filament broad, rigid; connective slightly produced; anther tall and erect, immobile, each cell with 2 sets of transversely oblique, closely packed, vermiform pollen-packets; stigma apparently bilobed, as if forming the top of a protruding funnel flanked by fleshy lobes that flare widely apart in old fls; rostellum long, narrow-triangular, wedged between the long pollinia, possibly topped by small dark knob. Seed elongate-cylindric with blunt ends.

DIST.: N.

Forest floor, under Beilschmiedia tarairi.

Some capsules are full of seeds although perianths appear never to have opened and pollinia are intact in situ. Good fresh fls are not easily found and the precise limits of stigmatic surfaces and column-wings are not clearly established.

The affinities of the N.Z. plant remains somewhat uncertain. To accommodate it Hatch (loc. cit. 183) proposed Subgenus Tarairea, diagnosed as differing from Y. japonica. in: 2 pollinia; column-wings fleshy and obtuse; labellum-disc without spur; ovary sessile. The narrow raceme of small almost sessile fls looks very different from the much more open infl. of Y. japonica. In the latter sp. long pedicels carry the few fls well away from the small bracts, the perianths are longer (to 3.5 cm. diam.) with full rounded shape, and the labellum is strongly pouched or spurred: in particular the column, broadly winged right to its base, and the 4 pollinia each in the form of a firm waxy knob (Finet Bull. Soc. bot. Fr. 43, 1896, t. 12, M, N) contrast strongly with the basally unwinged column and sectile pollinia of Y. australis, which, however, appear to be 4, not 2 as in Hatch's diagnosis. It should be noted that Maximowicz originally described the pollinia as sectile. In general form the fls of Y. australis have much in common with those of some spp. in the Goodyera Alliance. The glandular hairs resemble those of Spiranthes sinensis. On many counts the N.Z. plant would not seem out of place in Tribe Neottieae.