ON THE CULTIVATION OF SEA KALE. XOl 



Berwickshire. According to Dr. Smith, sandy shores are Natural soil, r 



its natural soil, but by what I can learn from others, as well 



as my own personal observation, it prefers loamy cliffs, rnixed 



with gravel. I found it near Dover ^ also in Sussex, in stiff 



loam : to the extensive beach of pure sand, both above and 



below Scarborough, in Yorkshire, it is, i believe, quite a 



stranger. 



The whole plant is smooth, of a beautiful glaucous hue, Desfcriptiou. 

 covered with a very fine meal ; occasionally, however, it va- 

 ries like the wallflower-leaved ten weeks stock, with quite 

 green leaves. Root dark brown, perennial, running deep 

 into the ground, divided iiito numerous wide spreading 

 branches, but not creeping* Radical leaves very large, 

 and spreading wide upon the ground, waved, more or less 

 slnuated, and indented, containing: a bud, or rudiment of the 

 next year's stem at the bottom of the leafstalk, dying away 

 in the autumn f. Stems several, from one foot and a half • - 



to two feet high, erect, branclsing alternately, and terminat- 

 ing in large panicles of spiked flowers, which smell some- 

 what like honey. Peduncles, as the fruit swells, consider- 

 ably elongated. Calyx often tinged with purple, its leaflets 

 nearly equal. Petals cream coloured, with purple claws, 

 larger than in many geaera of this natural order. Filaments- 

 purple. Anthers pale yellow. Glands of the receptacle 

 between the longer filaments yellowlah green. Stigma pale 

 yellow. Pouch, as the accurate Mr. Woodward describes it 

 in Wltherjng's work, at first egg-shaped, afterwards nearly 

 globular, fleshy, falling off when ripe, about August, with 

 the seed in it, which is large, and of a pale brown colour. 



* Rojt not creeping, in the proper*sense of that word, as Parkinson, 

 MUlfer, and Bryant have described it ; but if the branches be divided 

 into a number of pieces, each piece \Vill grow if ccJ^mmitted to the earth ; 

 ai:d a'^ it is impossible to dig among the widely extended lOots of these 

 plants without cutting many of them, and leaving a number of fragment?, 

 plants arise from such around the original, and give to it the appearance 

 of having creeping roots. Cort. 



"f- Parkinson perhaps nevor committed a more egregious blunder, than 

 in the account he has g'%'en of this part of the plant's economy ; ** Th e 

 root iff sometohnt great, keejungf the green leaves all the ic inter.'''' Bryant, 

 in his FL JJi<Et. misled, i)erhaps, by this account, says, *' The radical 

 haves bting green alt Ike ivinler, nre cut by ihe inhabitants where the 

 pUnt grows, and boUed<u Cabbage. C\'RT. 



The 



