Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/234

 212 SHORT NOTES AND aUERlES.

Umbellifer ; Mr. MelviU considers it indigenous. We hope to give a plate of it shortly, but it will be well to wait till the fruit is ripe before doing so ; indeed, in the absonee of ripe fruit, it is not possible to speak with absolute certainty as to its name. — Eds. Joukn. Bot.]

��PoLYGALA AUSTRIACA, Craiitz., IN Kent. — I liave much pleasure in sending specimens of this, which I had the good fortune of discovering on June 5th on Wye Down. Dr. Boswell Syme, to whom I submitted a specimen, pronounced it to be undoubtedly P. anstriaca. On June 17th I again, in company with another botanist, found it plentifully growing in tv\'o narrow strips of rough, chalky ground on the border of copsewood. There must surely be more of it on other parts of the downs, which are very extensive. — J. P. Duthie.

[We hope our readers will examine any chalk districts in their neigh- bourhoods for this interesting Polygala, hitherto only known in England in two spots in North Yorkshire. It is readily distinguished from P. cal- cnrea, Schultz, by its much smaller tlowers and narrow wings. The central nerve also of the wings is either not at all or but very slightly branched, and the branches very rarely, though occasionally to a slight extent, inosculate with those of the lateral veins. Some of Mr. Duthie's specimens are between four and five inches high. They seem referable to the restricted P. anstriaca of Reichenbach; the Teesdale plant being his P. uUginosa. — H. T.]

��Htmenophyllum unilaterale. — Apropos of the extract relative to this plant printed at page 188, I wish to remark that through the kind- ness of Lady Barkly I had the opportunity of examining specimens of the plant referred to by Mr. Andrews, which was given to Dr. Meller from the Bourbon Museum as authentic H. unilaterale, " named by Bory de St. Vincent himself," and that they clearly do not belong to nnilaterale at all, but to //. gracile, of Bory, which occurs both in Bourbon and the Mauritius, a plant which, though rather like tn7ibridge)ise in general habit, differs from it by the segments being destitute of serration (as Mr. An- drews has noted), and in the position of the sori and shape of the invo- lucre. The original description of unilaterale by Willdenow (Sp. Plant. v. 522) from Bory's specimens is a tolerably full one; and if Mr. An- drews will compare his plant with this he will, I doubt not, see clearly that two very different species have been confounded together, j)robably by some accidental transposition of labels. We have no specimen at Kew of any Hymenoplujllnm with serrated segments from Bourbon at all, and only one from the Mauritius, gathered by Captain Caruiichael long ago, and that has a distinctly toothed involucre, and in this way differs from unilaterale as Willdenow describes it just as tuubrldgense differs from Wilsoni. So far as the description of unilaterale goes, it fits our English Wilsoni very well. H. Boryanum is very different from either gracile or nnilaterale, much stronger, and more compound than either when properly developed, with hairy surfaces, and copious compound, round, terminal sori. — J. G. Baker.

��Cyperus fuscus. — In the last number (p. 148) Dr. J. E. Gray im- pugns the character of the above little plant as a native Englishman, but I -am at a loss to know on what grounds. Its Middlesex habitat may

�� �