MOUNTAIN FLOWERS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20308, 6 August 1931, Page 17

MOUNTAIN FLOWERS.

NEW ZEALAND BUTTERCUPS. New Zealand buttercups wero described as the finest in the world in a lecture given by Professor Arnold Wall to members and friends of the Canterbury Mountaineering Club last evening. Tho New Zealand family included certain very large and impressive species, one of which has had to pay the penalty of its greatness in that it was not perceived to be a buttercup by the earliest observers, who actually labelled it "The Mount Cook Lily," and thi3 name might possibly prove to be ineradicable, the professor told his listeners. There were 36 species; a very good muster when compared with the fifteen species claimed in Britain. The South Island was much richer than the North, the South island being able to bo&st of 22 buttercups of its own. But New Zealand buttercups were characteristically of the mountain, and that accounted for the preponderance in the South Island: as many as nineteen were time mountain plants, including one that ranged higher than any other plant in our flora —-Graham's Buttercup. "Tho aristocracy .of our buttercups is represented by a group of six t ail large, showy plants, three having -white and three yellow flowers, and all mountain species," said the professor. "The first of these in every respect is the plant, the Ranunculus Lyalli of science, and the Mount Cook Lily of popular speech." This great species, "the finest buttercup in the world," was found in the central and northern portions of the Southern Alps at from 2000 to 5000 feet, and the rather sombre scrub of the rainy belt was beautifully lit up during its flowering season by the great clustering snow-white masses of this buttercup. _ Matthews' Buttercup .(Ranunculus Mattbewsii), generally found on Mount Earnslaw, the Buttercup of Buchanan, only found in the western parts of tlie Lake District of -Otago, the Noble Buttercup (Ranunculus Insignis), the "New Zealand Kaikoura Buttercup," confined to . the Kaikoura and neighbouring districts, and, last, the. Ranunculus Godleyanus, most abundant about the Franz Josef Glacier, were among other species described at length by tlie lecturer, who used in illustration a number of specimens collected many, after much hard climbing, bv himself.