Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/294

 270 SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES.

5. Note, in conclusion, that there nre only twenty-three species fonnd in all tlie four masses, and that six of these are very rare in the Oolite, leaving- only seventeen montane plants which may be considered as dis- persed up to a standard of moderate frequency through the four ranges.

��SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES.

Bromus asper, L., Beneken. — I am very glad to have been able lo s°.e this in the living state. An examination of the plant noticed by Mr. Warren in Kensington Gardens (see p. 238) shows all the characters pointed out by Beneken in his paper (Bot. Zeitung, 1845, 725), as dis- tinguishing it from his i?. serotinus, which is the usual English '■^ asper" — or rather, if we are to use the oldest name, B. ramosits, lluds., as I have shown in Journ. Bot. VIII. 376. The aspect of the Kensington Gardens plant when growing is more distinct than the characters would have led one to expect ; the slender nodding panicle and small hoary spikelets scarcely at tirst suggest B. ramosus {futper) at all. There are always more than two branches in the lowest semi-verticil of the panicle, and these are shorter than in the ordinary plant, and not divaricate at a right angle with the main axis, but ascending, forming an acute angle with it ; the upper part of the panicle is drawn out and very pendulous, with several short-stalked single spikelets arranged on it. The spikelets themselves are not more than an inch long, containing from 5 to 8 Howcrs. The glumes are much less unequal than in the usual plant. Good characters are presented by the upper glume, which has its lateral ribs strongly hairy, and by the lower pales, which are uniformly hairy (to which the grey appearance of the spikelet is due), and not longer than their awns. The anthers are orange. The leaves, especially the lower ones, are con- siderably more hairy, and somewhat narrower than in usual B. raniosiis, Huds, whilst the sheath of the uppermost leaf is almost glabioiis. Though some of these characters are occasionally found in the common plant, the coexistence of all is sufficiently characteristic. Besides these points, the plant certainly flowers earlier than its commoner ally, the Kensington Gardens specimens, which grow in damp shady ground, were past flowering on August 4th (and the process of drying has since broken up the spikelets into separate flowers), whilst B. serotinus, of which I saw plenty on the next day in the sunny hedgerows of Hillingdon, was just in flower. The plant would be worth cultivation, with a view of testing the permanency of these characters. As for the locality, it seems most likely that the grass has been introduced into ihe Gardens, perhaps from abroad : Apera Spica-venti grows in the same enclosure. However that may be, it is one of the n)Ost interesting plants in Mr. Warren's remarkable list, to which, by the way, I can add Impatiens parcijlora and Bromus sterilis, the former in Hyde Park, the latter in Kensington Gardens. — Henry Trimen.

��Spffolk Plants. — I gathered several rare and interesting plants last month in the neighbourhood of Mildenhall and C'avenham, and there are two of them to which I wish now specially to call attention. The one is a ciliated form of PoJjjijala depressa, which I gathered on a grassy bank

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