Notes on Sexual Expression in Certain Species of New Zealand Coprosmas.* This paper gives preliminary observations during a research carried out under grant from the New Zealand Institute. By G. V. Wild and V. D. Zotov. [Read before the Manawatu Philosophical Society, 20th September, 1929; received by Editor, 8th October, 1929; issued separately, March 31st, 1930]. In creating the genus Coprosma for the two species foetidissima and lucida, J. R. and G. Forster (1776, pp. 137–8) include it in their section Polygamia Dioecia, and refer, with figures, to male, female, and hermaphrodite flowers. Of the ten species dealt with by A. Cunningham (1839, pp. 206–7) C. acerosa alone is described as dioecious. Raoul (1846, p. 23) described C. robusta as dioecious, while Hooker (1867, p. 110) says of the genus, “Flowers unisexual, often dioecious.” Cheeseman (1887, p. 223) in his revision of the genus, states, “The flowers are unisexual, and the sexes are placed on different plants. Occasionally, however, a few male flowers are intermixed with the female, and vice versa. Some species, and especially C. robusta and C. foetidissima, now and then produce hermaphrodite flowers, to all appearances well developed and perfect, but which seldom mature fruit.” Colenso (1889, p. 85) describes for his C. pendula (C. crassifolia, according to later authors) male, female, and hermaphrodite flowers, “the three kinds of flowers on one branchlet.” He observes, “Another shrub was hermaphrodite, or more strictly speaking polygamous—the first, I think, I have ever known of this genus, so pre-eminently dioecious.” Of his C. coffaeoides (loc. cit., p. 88) he says, “Specimens of the male plant have been seen carrying female flowers at the top of the branchlet.” Cheeseman (1925, p. 855) describes the genus as dioecious, without any statement about hermaphroditism. We give here our observations on the incidence of abnormal, irregular, and hermaphrodite flowers in the various species of the genus Coprosma that have engaged our attention; assuming always that the normal plant is dioecious. The observations were made during the summer 1928–29 with the exception of those on C. lucida, which were started two years before. For the purposes of this paper only the primary sexual characters —the presence of stamens or pistil—were used in determining the sexual position of a flower, but certain secondary characters were often useful in throwing early suspicion upon a plant. The chief of these were the stoutness of the bud and the width of the corolla in a male, and the more slender bud and narrower corolla of the female; the large number of flowers in more or less dense inflorescence in the male and the fewer flowers and somewhat lax inflorescence in the female.