Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/63

 SHORT NOTES AND aUEKIES. 53

notice in modern British Floras. A parallel variety occurs in P. Saxifraga as I have seen in Cheshire specimens. Mr. Sadler has also kindly sent me a specimen of the Centaurea from the Ochil (not Achil, as printed at p. 28) Hills. It is a rayed plant, and one of the numerous intermediates between typical C. Jacea and C. 7ii(/ra, which have been collectively called C. nigrescens, but divided into many " species " by Boreau and other French botanists. This Perthshire plant is, of the extremes, nearer C. Jacea than C. nigra, the upper phyllary-appendages being more lace- rated than pectinate, and quite covering the phyllaries themselves. Mr. Sadler has named it C. prateims, Thuill., a sufficiently accurate deter- mination if we may trust Billot's and other published Continental speci- mens. Its different aspect and involucres distinguish it from the usual South and West of England rayed form, which is, perhaps, C. serotina of Boreau, wrongly quoted as a synonym of C. amara, L., in Gren. and Godr. Fl. de France, vol. ii. p. 240, from which it is very different. — Henry Trimen.

��Ambrosia peruviana, Willd: — In 1863 I met with a single individual of this species in a stubble field at Margate, Kent. Very much puzzled what to make of it, I, by chance, showed it to Dr. Seemann, who imme- diately recognized it as a South American weed he was quite familiar with. — W. T. Thiselton Dyer.

��" Babington's curse " (p. 24.) — Perhaps this name is a reminiscence of a passage in the Rev. Charles Kingsley'«s 'Miscellanies,' vol. i. p. 181. Describing the vegetation of a chalk-stream, he proceeds : — " To this list will soon be added our Transatlantic curse, Bahingtonia diaboUca, alias Aiiacharis Ahinadrum. It has already (1858) ascended the Thames as high as Reading ; and a few years more, owing to the present aqua viva- riiiii/ mania, will see it filling every mill-head in England, to the torment of all millers. Young ladies are assured that the only plant for their vivariums is a sprig of Anacharis, for which they pay sixpence — the market value being that of a wasp, flea, or other scourge of the human race; and when the vivarium fails, its contents, Anacharis and all, are tost into the nearest ditch ; for which the said young lady ought to be fined five pounds, and would he if Governments governed. What an ' if!'" It is almost a dangerous experiment to parody so closely formal botanical names ; syno- nyms have been quoted pedantically quite as absurd. — VV. T. Thisel- ton Dyer.

��Alyssum incanum, L. — In answer to INIr. Watson's question in Vol. VIII. p. 383, 1 beg to say that I picked a single specimen of Alyssum incanum in a clover-field about two miles from Ross, Herefordshire, in the summer of either 1866 or 1867. The plant was solitai-y ; nor have I noticed it before or since in the same locality. — Augustin Ley.

��Galium tricorne, With., is usually described as having umbellate cymes with oidy 1-3 flowers. In examples, however, which I met with in a potato-field at Garden Clift", Gloucestershire, the cymes are com- pound with as many as nine pedicels, not always equally fruit-bearing, though in most instances both the cocci are developed. — W. T. Thisel- ton Dyer.

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