Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Near Port Jackson, N.S.W. Type: BM (fide Nicholls). Known also from other Australian States.

Plant at fl. c. 5–40 cm. tall. Lf c. 10–15 mm. wide, channelled, fleshy, keeled, us. without longitudinal ribs. Infl. us. slender, capsules often maturing without per. having opened; fls to c. 10, us. fewer. Per. c. 8–12 mm. long, us. lilac-pink, without stripes or spots. Sepals, petals and labellum similar, elliptic, subacute. Column-arms terete, us. ± erect; cilia white, rather sparse and straight, mostly projecting above post-anther lobe; post-anther lobe overtopping anther, dark above middle and us. yellow on margin which is so turned in as to appear deeply cleft or bifid, the 2 halves rounded and meeting along mid line above anther.

DIST.: N., S. to Westland and mid-Canterbury.

Sunny banks and rough pastures.

FL. 11–12.

T. colensoi Hook. f. Handbk N.Z. Fl. 1864, 271. Original locality: "Northern Island, Colenso". Type: K(?). There is nothing in the description to separate this from T. pauciflora with which Hooker (Fl. N.Z. 1, 1853, 244) had previously united it.

T. sanscilia Irwin ex Hatch in T.R.S.N.Z. 79, 1952, 397, Pl. 81, B–E. Original localities: "Kaimaumau, 10/1949, J. B. Irwin. Ahipara, 10/1949, O. E. Gibson". Holotype: "In Herb. Hatch No. 570—cultivated at New Plymouth from tubers collected by Gibson at Ahipara 19/10/1949". The 2 localities are within 20 miles of each other and Irwin's field notes make it clear that in each place only one small 1-fld plant was found. The chief difference from T. pauciflora, as shown by description and figures, lies in the absence of cilia. Carse identified as T. pauciflora slender 1–2-fld plants from Kaiaka, also within 20 miles of Ahipara (CANTY 544/2 Herb. Carse, 12.10.15, H. Carse and AK 3357); in these fls, as far as can be seen, cilia are almost to quite absent. Similarly abnormal fls occur in other spp.

T. cornuta Col. in T.N.Z.I. 20, 1888, 206 may belong here. No specimens are known and the description was based on a single plant originally from near Poutu Point, North Kaipara, 1885, Mr C. P. Winkelmann. The specific epithet presumably refers to "2 little curved pointed horns, one on each side" of the hood, into which "the lower lateral margins between apex and staminodia" are produced. This feature is to be seen, sts more and sts less developed, in several spp., including T. pauciflora.

The difficulty in naming this plant goes back to Robert Brown's Prodromus of 1810. There the diagnoses of T. pauciflora and T. nuda are identically worded except that the former has "spica pauciflora" and the latter "spica multiflora". Later treatments tend to stress the deeply cleft post-anther lobe of T. pauciflora, originally described as "dorso nudo emarginata lobulis rotundatis integris". The name pauciflora is used here for plants in which the two sides of the narrow cleft are smoothly incurved so that their margins are us. not visible; correlated characters seem to be exceptionally stiffly erect white cilia, early flowering, the flowers apparently able to set seed without the perianth having opened, and marked general reddish colouring of the whole plant in exposed places.