ON THE FLORA OF SHETLAND 113 



sessile, and with a broadly truncate base, about 6-u, gradually- 

 decreasing upwards. Leaves with numerous bulbous-based 

 hairs on both sides, dull olive green, paler below, becoming 

 copper-coloured in decay. Stem stout, 5-12 inches, simple or 

 nearly so. Fed. densely floccose, with a few long simple and 

 very few glandular hairs. Heads about 3-5 in a close corymb, 

 rarely with a short branch below, broad and short, very truncate- 

 based; phyllaries floccose, with a few simple and a few glandular 

 hairs, outermost short, ovate sub-obtuse, innermost three 

 times as long, lanceolate, acute or slightly acuminated, pale- 

 margined. Flowers lemon-yellow, styles black or nearly so, 

 ligules glabrous-tipped. N. Among rocks west of Feal, on 

 the north side of Roeness Voe, extremely scarce (Nos. 1043, 

 1092). 



Considered by Dahlstedt to be " a new form of the Vulgata 

 section " ; but I have reason to think that the plant is hypo- 

 phyllopodous, in which case it comes near to H. Scullyi, W. R. 

 Linton (Alpestria), which is the position Mr. Linton would 

 assign to it. The latter, however, is a much larger plant, 

 18-24 inches high, with a "panicle corymbosely branched, 

 leafy below." Its foliage, too, is of a remarkable grass-green 

 colour, yellow in decay, and the leaves are quite glabrous on 

 the upper surface. The flowers are larger, and both they and 

 the styles are quite different in colour. In cultivation H. breve 

 branches rather freely, but does not exceed 15 inches in height. 

 It has been referred to H. zetlandicum both by the Rev. E. S. 

 Marshall ("Journ. Bot.," 1898, p. 172) and by Mr. F. N. 

 Williams ("Prodr.," p. 126), but I do not know on what 

 character. H. zetlandicum differs in its full yellow somewhat 

 orange flowers, and pure yellow styles, which, however, soon 

 become tinged with brownish; stem leaves definite, 1-3 only, 

 irrespective of the size of the plant. The teeth of the leaves 

 are more directed forwards, often strongly so, and the phyllaries 

 bear numerous long and short gland-tipped hairs. Root leaves 

 narrower, with longer and more narrowly winged petioles ; and 

 finally, cultivation of the two forms, side by side, shows their 

 mode of branching to be entirely different. 



I can only account for the great scarcity of H. breve on the 

 supposition that the plants seen represented a colony recently 

 established from wind-borne seed, and that the headquarters of 

 the plant will be found somewhere further out among the crags 

 of Roeness Voe. On granite. 



H. zetlandicum^ Beeby. N. Confined to a tract near North Roe, 

 about 2x1 miles, extending from Burga Taing northwards to 

 Benegarth, but plentiful in many places within this area (Nos. 

 1044, 1082, etc.). On gneiss. 

 66 E 



