Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/432

 THE FLORA OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. Probably no local Flora extant contains so large a number of plants which have no claim to inclusion. The author explains his action thus : "I have admitted every species now found established in a wild condition, however introduced The criterion I have taken is the establishment in a healthy condition of self-sown plants. None other is really of value, and certain interesting- problems could not have been studied, if these doubtful forms had not been included. The climate of the county is so genial, that these introduced plants are exceedingly abundant, and exceedingly difficult to tell from plants undoubtedly native to Scotland." In another place, Mr. Ehiot mentions as types of the plants whose presence is probably due to this geniality of climate, Datura Stra- monium, Gagea lutea, and Tragopogon poirifolius : to us it appears that each of these is referable to a different cause of introduction, and the presence of two of them in many local lists would seem to show that climate has little to do with the matter. If Mr. Elliot's standard were to be accepted, every cottage garden would contribute its quota to every local flora, for it is mainly peopled by '' the establishment in a healthy condition of self-sown plants." And any one of these would have at least as good a claim to insertion as Viola cornuta and Convolvulus tricolor, which occurred at Dumfries railway-station in 1892, Symphoricarpos racemosus ("escape"), Cornus sanguinea ("planted"), Geranium pyrenaicum ("sown?"), Campanula persicifolia ("escape"), and many more. We have not been able to discover what meaning Mr. Elliot attaches to the term "escape," with which he brands impartially such plants as Geranium, columhinum, Trifolimn ochroleucum, Medi- cago denticidata, Galium tricorne, Caucalis nodosa, Malva borealis, Cuscuta E pithy mum {!), and many more. "Escape" from what? Surely the good folk of Dumfries do not cultivate any of these weeds in their gardens or fields ? Introduced they may be, but they are no more "escapes" than the " escaped nuns " of Protestant fiction, or than the prisoner celebrated by Mark Twain, who after five years' incarceration opened the door and went away. No less than 146, including such plants as Sibbaldia, are included in the category of "escapes" — about one-sixth of the flora, which Mr. Elliot estimates at nearly nine hundred species. Nor does Mr. Elliot's own definition hold good in all cases. JRosa Dicksoni, for example, an " escape " at Roadside New Mills, is "since rooted out": how then can this be considered as "now found established in a wild condition " ? And on what ground are such species as Trigonella ornithopodioides (with one doubtful locality), Ono7iis reclinata (" supposed to be extinct "), SpircBa Fili- pendula ("requires confirmation"), Pyrola rotundifolia ("P. Gray, 1850?"), Euphorbia portlandica ("locality?"), Alchemilla alpina (" requires confirmation "), included in the Flora ? The number of the species requiring confirmation is, by the way, very large, and it does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Elliot that it was part of his duty to try to supply this. In one case, at any rate, such confirmation is not difficult to obtain : of the two localities for Ceyitunculus