Page:The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.djvu/279

Falklands, etc.] 2. SAGLNA, Linn.

1. Skgth a procumbens, Linn. Sp. PI. p. 1S5. DC. Prodi: vol. i. p. 389. Smith, Engl. Bot. t. 880. Gaudichaud in Ann. Sc. Nat. vol. v. p. 105. et Tog. Frei/c. Bot. p. 137. If Untitle in Mem. Soc. Linn. Paris, vol. iv. p. 617. Hook et Am. in Bot. Misc. vol. iii. p. 147.

Hab. Falkland Islands, abundant near the sea; Gaudichaud, IfUrville, and all subsequent collectors.

These specimens are uudistinguishable from others of European growth, by any characters I can discover. I am not aware that this plant inhabits any other part of the southern hemisphere except the higher latitudes of South America. Dr. Gillies gathered it on the roofs of houses in Buenos Ayres, where it may possibly have been introduced, though in the Falkland Islands, I should have at first sight pronounced it, from its great abundance, certainly wild; these are its only South American habitats. I sought for it carefully, but in vain, in Fuegia. In North America it is much more widely diffused, from Providence to New Orleans on the east coast, but I have seen no west coast specimens ; those of Douglas (and hence possibly Scolder's quoted in Torrey and Gray's Flora, as coming from the Oregon), belonging to Spergula saginoides; in no other part of North America has the plant been found, save in the most highly cultivated districts, and not at all in the British possessions, and since it is one that increases and follows cultivation rapidly, I feel inclined to exclude it from the North American flora, especially as Torrey and Gray mark the other British species, S.decumbens, YA.(8perg. saginoides, L.), S.apetala,Tj., and S.erecta, L., as having all been probably introduced. Its European range is widely different from the American, northward, it is found in Iceland and Lapland, North Russia and Siberia, in the latter countries, however, avoiding the extreme rigour of the Siberian plains and confined to the mountains of the Altai and Baikal. Spain again seems its southern limit in the west of Europe, European Turkey in the middle, and the Caucasus on the east. Spergula saginoides, though so very nearly allied in other respects, has a considerably different geographical range, and hence should, iu questions of distribution, be carefully separated from this. In England it is rather a rare and mountain plant; we have well authenticated specimens from Greenland, Iceland, and Lapland, it also inhabits North Russia, and Siberia, (but not beyond the 50th. degree,) Unalashka and the west coast of North America to the southward of the Arctic circle ; thus, like the S. procumbens, this is also a plant of the old world, both Greenland and North-west America having more of the peculiarities of European and Asiatic botany respectively, than of American. Not oidy do Torrey and Gray remark that it is probably introduced in the United States, but their specimens even appear to belong to a different species. In the south of Europe it is also an Alpine plant, having been found on the Pyrenees on the east, and on the Caucasus to the west, Aucher Eloy's, n. 654, from Persia is probably the same, but his specimens are very imperfect.

3. COLOBAJ T THUS, Feml.

1. Colobanthxs subulatus, Hook fil. ; Ft. Antarct. part i. p. 13. (Tab. XCIII. sub nomine Saginse.)

Var. |3, Bar/riii ii, apicibns foliorum segmentorvunque periauthii muticis.

Hab. Good Success Bay; Banks and Solander. Herrnite Island, Cape Horn, clefts of rocks, 12-1400 feet; J.D.H. Falkland Islands; near the sea and at the tops of the hills, 700-1000 feet; IfUrville, J. B. II. Var. 0, south part of Tierra del Fuego ; C. Darwin, Esq. In the first part of this volume I alluded to the singular fact, that all the Campbell Island specimens of C. subulata have 5 segments to the perianth, 5 stamens, 5 styles, and 5 valves to the capsule, while all those from Fuegia and the Falklands have only 4, and this constantly and unaccompanied with any other appreciable differences. It may fairly be questioned whether the pentandrous state is not equally entitled to specific rank, as Spergula saginoides is to be separated from Sagina procumbens.

From the 4 stamens, of this state of C. subulatus and of all the other species, alternating with the segments of