Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/40

30 leaves are spinulosely serrated. P. sessile was gathered in Sussex many years since, but I have not heard of its recent discovery either there or elsewhere. It is one of the rarest British Mosses. P. patens, on dried mud, almost every season, intermixed with Physcomitrium sphæricum, and usually much more plentiful than that species. This Moss comes up in autumn in the Ashley district of Bowdon, although very sparingly, wherever an open drain has been cut in spring. It also springs up about Bollington, under the same circumstances. Phascum cuspidatum. I have not yet found this at Mere, but it comes up on banks on the Chester Road between Bowdon and Bucklow Hill, when they have been newly made up, or plastered with mud from the road. Leskia polycarpa fruits freely about the roots of trees on the borders of Mere, both in autumn and spring. Hypnum riparium, a very neat variety of this Moss, fruits in abundance in August and April, on clay banks and at the roots of trees at Mere. Riccia fluitans and R. crystallina are both frequent on dried mud at Mere, with Phascum patens, etc., and both species fruit freely there. Numerous interesting flowering plants are also found, viz. Elatine hexandra, Limosella aquatica, Peplis Portula, Polygonum minus, Littorella lacustris,—all plentiful on mud. Carex vesicaria, fringing the woods at the edge of the Mere. Scirpus acicularis, in vast quantity in sandy places. Carex Œderi, in stony and grassy places. This is the true Œderi, and very rare; I have only seen it elsewhere on the sands on the south side of Southport, where it is very abundant and luxuriant. It appears quite distinct as a species from C. flava (including C. lepidocarpa), with which it is often placed as a variety. Centunculus minimus, frequent some seasons in the open pastures on the borders of the Mere. Mentha sativa, in ditches by the roadsides between Bucklow Hill and Mere Mere. Rubus Balfourianus and R. pallidus, in thickets by the Mere. Polygonum mite has been reported from Mere, but after searching without success for it for several seasons, I can only suppose that some of the more luxuriant forms of P. minus, frequent there, have been mistaken for it. The seeds of P. minus, which are shining black, and only half the size of those of P. mite, afford the only safe distinction.—Mr. Hardy remarked that so long ago as 1828, Mr. William Wilson, of Warrington, sent P. mite from a Cheshire locality, under the erroneous name of P. minus, to the late Sir William Jackson Hooker, in whose herbarium at Kew the specimens still are. Mr. Hewett C. Watson, the author of the 'Cybele Britannica,' mentions these specimens, and does not express any doubt of their being the P. mite, of Schrank. Mr. Hardy found the plant at Mere in 1860, and sent specimens to the Botanical Exchange Club, then located at Thirsk; and Mr. J. G. Baker, the Curator, in his report for the next year, mentions these specimens as new to the Mersey province, Mr. Hardy stated his belief in Mr. Watson's opinion, that P. mite was much more difficult to distinguish from P. Persicaria than from P. minus; and he had not the least doubt, notwithstanding Mr. Hunt's objection, that, now special attention had been called to the species in question, it would be proved, in the course of another season, to be an inhabitant not only of the Mere district, but common in other stations included in the Manchester flora.