252 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



BOTANICAL NOTES AND NEWS. 



Plants of a City Waste. Behind the Royal Scottish Museum, 

 in the heart of the city of Edinburgh, where the demolition of an old 

 house has left a vacant space of 70 x 20 feet enclosed by walls, 

 Nature for the last two years has been reclaiming this waste with 

 plants. It is now colonised by seventeen species, all of which show 

 luxuriant growth. The relative abundance of each plant now 

 established is a less fascinating point of study than the problem of 

 how it originally came. 



Composite plants are the most conspicuous, and are well 

 established in this waste. Carditus lanceolatus, Senecio rulgaris, 

 Sonchits asper, and another, a garden escape, Taraxacum officinale^ 

 and Tussilago farfara, all of whose fruits are furnished with a pappus 

 and well adapted to wind distribution, may easily have come here 

 floating above the house-tops on a light wind. The presence also 

 of Rutnex obtusifolius with its winged fruit, Epilobium montanum 

 with its feathery seeds, and two species of Salix (garden escapes), is 

 probably due to the same means. 



Stellaria media, Capsella bursa-pastoris, and Sagina procumbens, 

 which quickly take possession of any piece of rough soil in the heart 

 of a city, are among other plants here which may have been brought 

 by the wind. But as their seeds are not well adapted to dispersal it 

 is doubtful whether wind alone can account for their presence in this 

 colony. 



The seeds of grass Poa pratensis, P. anmta, and Lolium perenne 

 were most likely introduced here by the direct agency of man or bird. 

 At all events the establishment of Ribes grossularia in this enclosure 

 was due to one of these causes. A. B. STEELE, Edinburgh. 



Alisma Plantago, Z., in Caithness. In the "Annals," 1907, p. 

 103, I reported Butomits uinbeUatus for Caithness the record sent 

 me by a correspondent in that county. No specimen was sent, but 

 last winter a promise was given that one should be forwarded. My 

 astonishment was great, and vexation too, to receive a fine full- 

 grown specimen of the Alisma as Butomus. Of course I ought not 

 to have accepted the record without a voucher specimen. The only 

 redeeming point is that the Alisma is a new record for the county, 

 and that being substituted the remarks as to Continental distribu- 

 tion may stand as nearly the same. It is the form with lanceolate 

 leaves, none being cordate. A. BENNETT. 



Insect Visitors of Fumaria offleinalis, L. This plant seems 

 to be only irregularly visited by insects, and few species have been 

 recorded. M tiller in his "Fertilisation of Flowers" gives only the 

 honey-bee (Apis mellifica, L.). Warnstorf records a Bombus (species 

 not mentioned), and Scott-Elliot in his " Flora of Dumfriesshire " 



