Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/334

 306 THE LOCAL FIELD CLUBS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

rnc the Inrpjest frond he could find, about six inches in length, which has been authenticated at the British Museum. — E. B. Penfold.

��Plants near Birmingham. — It may be interesting to record a new station for one or two of our rarer plants which I find in this neighbour- hood. Carex teretiuscula, var. /3. Ehrhartiana, I find growing on the borders of one of the pools at Sutton Park. Tn this same park, but about half a mile distant from the last, I find Carex lavigata, and just outside the park Mentha rotnndlfol'ia in the greatest abundance. If this last is an escape, I am puzzled to account for its presence in the meadow in question, as there is onl_y one small garden anywhere near, and no trace of Mentha rotnnd'ifolla can I find in it. — James Bagnall.

��Plants near Plymouth. — Gnaphallam syhuticmn, L., near Ply- mouth. — The author of the ' Cybele Britannica,' in vol, ii. speaks of this plant as "apparently very rare in the Peninsula" (Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset), and, in the Compendium, records it for Devon alone of the three counties of the province. So far as the neighbourhood of Plymouth is concerned, my experience confirms Mr. Watson's statements as to its great rarity in the south-west of England, since I never met with it any- where here until recently, when I discovered it in two pastures enclosed from Crownhill Down, near Plympton. In one it grows plentifully, but in the other only sparingly. A few days after finding it in this locality, I was siu'prised at seeing three plants in another, Koborouyih Down, about six miles north of Plymouth. Poa cuuipressa, L., in Cornwall. — This Grass is but thinly scattered over the country around Plymouth. One of its local stations is a dry bank about a mile from Torpoint, Cornwall, by the road leading thence to St. John's, by Trevol. It seems not to have been hitherto recorded from Cornwall. I take the opportunity of correct- ing two typographical errors in my article on " Plymouth Plants " in ' Joiu'iuil of Botany,' Vol. IX. pp. 240-342 ; in second line, under Pyriis to7'ininalis, for base read bole ; in first line, under Lastrea spinalosa, for most read moist. — T. E. Archer Briggs.

��Alisma Plantago. — If British botanists want occupation at this sea- son of the year, a large field, comparatively unworked in England, lies open in the comparative anatomy of the sid^terranean and subaqueous parts of plants. The study of the life-history of the above common spe- cies, for example, would probably give new ideas on botany to many who are now mere collectors and systematists. Nolte has described and figured, in his essay on Stratiotes and Sagittaria, corm-like tubers, closely similar to those of the latter plant, in Alisma, which do not seem to have been observed, or at least properly understood in this country. Like those of S'jgitturia, they are buds remaining dormant through the winter, and containing a store of nutriment, to be employed in the development of the new plant from the tuber iu the next year. — Henry Trimen.

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