Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/270

240 fibres. Leaves composing numerous radical tufts, dark green, equitant, sword-shaped, ribbed, two inches long. Stem erect, from four to six inches high, solitary, simple, round, quite smooth, naked; triangular at the base, where it often bears one small leaf, not rising above the others. Flowers pale green, very small, in a little oblong, obtuse, generally very dense head, from a quarter to half an inch in length. The partial flower-stalks are entirely wanting, the calyx being crowded close to the main stalk, with hardly any perceptible bractea. The base of the flower within the calyx is however elongated, assuming, as the fruit advances, the appearance of a thick stalk, swelling upwards, half a line in length. Calyx very deeply divided into three acute segments, small, membranous, and whitish. Petals hardly a line long, obovate, generally quite obtuse, concave, greenish-white, longer than the stamens. Germens combined into a nearly globular form, with three furrows. Styles extremely short, spreading, with abrupt, slightly capitate, stigmas. Capsules converging, roundish-obovate, each about the size of mustard-seed, obtuse, with a minute spreading point crowned by the style.

Such is the original Lapland plant of Linnæus, exactly agreeing with specimens from Scotland and the county of Durham, as represented in ''Engl. Bot., and answering precisely to the T. pusilla'', adopted by Pursh from Michaux. With this has all along been nfounded a Swiss species, which we are next to describe, and which is the only plant known to botanists of the South of Europe as the Linnæan Anthericum calyculatum. Dillenius caused this confusion, as appears by the Flora Lapponica; where Linnæus, who strongly suspected these two plants to be different, but never, to the day of his death, saw more than one of them, was induced by his learned correspondent to consider them as varieties of each other.

2. T. al-