Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/263

Falklands, etc.] green shining leaves and very conspicuous golden yellow flowers. The wood is pale yellow, affording a gamboge coloured dye, the berries of a deep steel blue colour, and few in comparison to the size of the flower.

LXXXVI. Fig. 1, a flower; fig. 2, a petal and stamen removed from the flower; fig. 3, pistil:—all magnified.

2. buxifolia, Lam.; erecta, ramosa, spinis tripartitis, foliis oblongo-lanceolatis obovatisve planta juniore majoribus petiolatis pungentibus hic illic spinoso-dentatis seniore minoribus plerumque integerriniis acutis post anthesin coriaceis, pedicellis 1—3-floris, bacca globosa. B. buxifolia, Lamarck, Illust. t. 253. f. 3. ''DC. Syst. Veg''. vol. ii. p. 15. Prodr. vol. i. p. 107. ''Hook, et Arn. in Bot. Miscell''. vol. iii. p. 136. B. microphylla, ''Forst. Comm''. vol. ix. p. 29. B. dulcis, ''Sweet, Hort. Britann''. 2nd Series, vol. i. t. 100. B. inermis, ''Pers.? Ench.'' vol. i. p. 387. ''DC. Prodr''. vol. i. p. 107.

Hab. Strait of Magalhaens and throughout Fuegia; Commerson, and all subsecpient collectors.

This is a variable species, especially in the foliage, exhibiting a difl'erent aspect at different seasons of the year. In spring, when the flowering commences, fascicles of new leaves are produced, which are pale green, membranous, and entire; at this period the leaves of the former season begin falling whole those of the present year gradually become larger, stiffer, coriaceous, and generally mueronate or pungent at the apex. They are not fully developed till autumn, when they are generally quite entire, attenuated at the base, and shortly petiolate, about half an inch long, rigid and coriaceous, reticulated on the upper surface; during the following spring these in their turn fall away. In seedling plants the leaves are larger than at any future time, on long petioles, broader, and here and there furnished with spinous teeth. The flowers are generally in threes, but sometimes solitary, pale yellow. The berries, about the size of a small pea, were much used for tarts by the officers of the ’Beagle' and found excellent. The B. dtrfcis, of Sweet, agrees with the common form of this plant, except that the flowers are larger in that author's figure and the pubescence of the pedicels not visible in the wild specimens. The B. biennis seems a variety, some of the specimens being quite unarmed; indeed the spines of this genus afford but an inconstant character.

Plate LXXXVII. (Under the name of B. microphylla). Fig. 1, a flower; fig. 2, petal and stamen removed from the same; fig. 3, pistils:—all magnified.

3. Berberis empetrifolia, Lam. Illustr. t. 253. f. 4. DC. Sj/st. Teg. vol. ii. p. 16. Prodr. vol. i. p. 107. Hook, et Am. in Bot. MisceU. vol. iii. p. 136.

Hab. Strait of Magalhaens; common in alpine woods; Commerson. Port Famine; Copt. King.

This species is more characteristic of a dry chmate than of the moist wooded country of Fuegia and Southwest Chili. The Strait seems to be its southern limit; it inhabits neither the east nor west coasts, but is confined to the Cordillera itself, from many elevated parts of which range we have received it, gathered by Gillies, Cuming, Macrae, and Bridges; it very probably therefore is a native of the whole length of that range, from lat. 34.° to lat. 54°, descending to the level of the sea at Port Famine, to which point the mountains are continued in one unbroken chain.

1. ARABIS, L.

1. Arabis Macloviana, Hook.; glaberrima, basi ramosa, foliis inferne dentato-serratis radicalibus longe petiolatis oblongis obtusis caulinis sensim minoribus, supremis sessilibus lineari-oblongis, floribus in corymbum densum dispositis, sepalis obtusis extus hirsutis pedicellurn sequantibus, petalis albis spathulatis, siliquis