SOME CRITICAL SPECIES OF ECHIUM. 421 
less ciliate on the margin. The colour in life is a varying compound of blue 
and light purple, which generally dries blue but sometimes shows the purple 
tint. The corollas of Æ. maritimum, Willd.= E. confusum, Coiney, which by 
some authors has been carelessly thought to be a variety of plantagineum, are 
smaller, pubescent all over externally, and Prussian or indigo blue in dried 
specimens *, 
The failure of pre-Linnean botanists to recognise Æ. plantagineum and its 
subsequent confusion with Æ. violaceum have caused much trouble. The 
rather wide intervals between the fruiting calyces have encouraged confusion 
with Æ. eretieum, and the purplish corollas have led to the misappropriation of 
the name violaceum to large flowered forms of plantagineum. Examples from 
the Atlantic islands often have exceptionally large flowers—e. g., Bourgeau, 
Pl. Canarienses anno 1845 no. 235, from Teneriffe, with corollas fully 3 em. 
long and very wide-throated. Similar plants in Herb. Kew are all labelled 
violaceum by C. B. Clarke; these should perhaps be recognised as a variety, 
but not under that name. 
E. grandiflorum, Dest., is very distinct in respect of every organ. Its 
reduction to a variety of plantagineum, accepted even by so good a judge as 
Ball (Journ. Linn. Soc. xvi. p. 575), is a reductio ad absurdum. A beautiful 
species from Palestine, X. judwæum mihi, closely allied to grandiflorum, is 
wrongly determined as plantagineum (or violaceum in the same sense) in all 
the exsiccata I have seen: for instance, from the Haram Court at Jerusalem, 
leg. M. J. Fox, Feb. 1867; from Jericho in Bornmüller's Tt. Syr. 1897, 
no. 1136, and from the same place in Meyers and Dinsmore, Pl. Palæst. 
Maris Mortui. True plantagineum is also found in Palestine: e. g. PI. 
Jordanice ex Herb. Postian. no. 526 from Sarada and no. 527 from Wady el 
Kefar ; also from Antioch, leg. Loftus no. 71. 
E. plantagineum is the species which has spread most widely in regions 
remote from its natural home. It is represented from the Cape of Good 
Hope, from Australia, where it is plentiful in grass lands round Adelaide, 
from the Eastern U.S.A., from Southern Brazil (leg. Chamisso), from 
Montevideo, and from Buenos Aires. Poiret gave the name of Æ. bonariense 
to the Buenos Aires plant,though it is just typical plantagineum. 
But /. plantagineum is by no means uniform. Its complete specific isola- 
tion should encourage a study of its forms. The radical leaves do not always 
resemble those of Plantago major. Jacquin, Hort. Vind. t. 45 (1770), figures 
a narrow-leaved form as * Æ. plantaginei Linn. an varietas ?" which is quoted 
by Murray in Syst. Veg. ed. xiv. p. 189 as * varietas foliis radicalibus lanceolatis 
longe petiolatis Jacq. t. 45." M. Battandier tells me that in Algeria 
plantagineum hybridises with grandiflorum. This is a matter for further 
* The annulus of the tube is quite different ; plantagineum belongs to De Coincy’s sect. 
Lleuthervlepis, maritimum oscillates between Eleutherolepis and Gamolepis. 
