HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSS LP. 



259 



BOTANY. 



Edelweiss. — There lias been some mystery re- 

 garding this plant on account of the various notices 

 referring to it by its German name only, and the 

 readers of such notices being led to suppose it is 

 only to be found near glaciers, where the accident 

 happened to an unfortunate lady when in search 

 of it from Pontresina, in the Engadine. It is the 

 Qnaphalium leonfopodmm, Scopoli {Leontopodlum 

 alpinnm, Decandolle), a plant not only of the Swiss 

 Alps, but various parts of the Pyrenees, Dauphine, 

 &c., in mountain pastures, far away from glaciers, 

 although, of course, it may be met with in pastures 

 near them ; it is, or was a few years back, tolerably 

 abundant on the summit of the Dole, in the Jura 

 mountains, above Geneva, and is not unfrequent iu 

 the Engadine, in a contrary direction to wliere the 

 lady referred to sought it, though not far from it, 

 but not near a glacier. It belongs to a genus of 

 which we have many in England, known as " cud- 

 weeds," It is a very beautiful plant, remarkable for 

 its dense clusters of flower-heads, surrounded by a 

 kind of radiating general involucre of floral leaves, 

 all densely clothed with a close white cotton, and 

 is well known to all botanists accustomed to high 

 alpine and mountain pastures. The gnaphaliums 

 are closely allied to the Elichrysum, the guapha- 

 lium of Linnaeus, which is so often seen in the 

 shops made into wreaths as votive offerings to the 

 dead, common in Prance, and sometimes iu England, 

 in cemeteries, and is the Gmphalimn citrinum of 

 Lamarck.— I'. B. W. 



P. VESCA AND P. PKAGARiA. — Any observant 

 lover of wild flowers may soon learn to distinguish 

 Fragaria v. (wliich seldom flowers before May) 

 from Potentilla f. (which is one of our earliest 

 spring flowers, not unfrequently blooming in Feb- 

 ruary and even January) by its much greener foliage, 

 its more conspicuous starlike flowers, and its more 

 erect habit. Botanists would, I suppose, be agreed 

 in accepting the following characters as distinctive, 

 in addition to the great generic difference of fruit : 

 —Fragaria ».— Petals contiguous ; leaves bright 

 green above, with few silky hairs ; nerves of leaflets 

 sunk above ; stem with runners. Fotentilla /— 

 Petals smaller, not contiguous ; leaves greyish 

 green, densely covered with long silky hairs on 

 both sides ; nerves of leaflets not sunk above ; 

 flowering-branches weak, and less erect than iu 

 Fragaria v.; stem tufted, sometimes shortly creep- 

 ing.— 7^. M. Rogers. 



Varieties of Plants. — I enclose a curious 

 specimen of what I suppose is Angelica sylvestris. 

 Instead of five stamens and five petals, it has only 

 two of each. Tiie umbels are very irregular, several 

 of the flowers standing on pedicels only, without 

 any primary ray or umbellule. The flowers, too. 



instead of being all white or all light red, are some 

 white and some dark red, and some a mixture of 

 the two colours. There were no leaves to be seen- 

 It is probably a monstrosity, and so not likely to 

 reproduce its kind. Does not such a case prove 

 conclusively that many of the so-called varieties of 

 plants, especially of ferns, are mere chance produc- 

 tions ?— i2. W. 



Kabe Plants.— a meadow at Stainall, North 

 Lancashire, assumes in April a dusky-brown hue 

 from an abundance of the plant Fritillaria Meleagris, 

 and about two miles from the above, in the town- 

 ship of Out Rawcliffe, another meadow is almost 

 white in the month of May with the beautiful 

 Narcissus poeticus, both of which habitats are far 

 remote from any garden.— /«»2e5 Pearson. 



Disappearance of Rare Plants. — Having 

 lately returned from a short tour in Scotland, I can 

 state from experience that many of the rare plants 

 of the country are disappearing from their habitats, 

 owing to the wholesale manner iu which they are 

 taken away. This remark applies more particularly 

 to ferns, but is unfortunately true to a great extent 

 iu regard to phanerogamia also. Thus, for instance, 

 I found it stated in an old number of the " Phyto- 

 logist," that in certain specified localities near 

 ^vsi&mdiX Polysiichitm lonchitis a,nd Asplenium viride 

 were abundant. This is certainly not the case now. 

 They are I believe still to be had in some parts near 

 there, but have all but entirely disappeared from 

 the localities mentioned iu the " Phytologist." The 

 waiter at the hotel at Braemar told me- he had 

 frequently seen whole boxfulls of ferns sent away, 

 and therefore it is no wonder they are now scarce. 

 Even on Lochnagar (at least near the beaten track) 

 lonchitis was exoeedingly rare, and Asplenimi 

 viride I could not find anywhere. Linncea horealis 

 had also, so far as I could make out after a careful 

 search, quite disappeared from the habitat assigned 

 it in the aforesaid number of the "Phytologist." 

 At the Botanical Garden at Edinburgh, I asked 

 one of the curators whether there was any chance 

 of my finding Corallorrhiza innata and Lin7i(sa 

 borealis, both which plants are stated in the " Flora 

 of Edinburgh " to grow within ten miles of that 

 town. He told me that there had already been 

 that season a party of students to look for the 

 Corallorrhiza, and as for the Liimcea it still grew in 

 some parts of the Pentlands, but in very out-of-the- 

 way parts. The result of all this wholesale de- 

 struction of plants is that many of our rarities are 

 fast disappearing from the country altogether. At 

 Braemar I found Geranium sylvaticiim, Oxyria 

 reniformis, Polypodium dryopleris, and phegopteris 

 plentifully, as also Arctostaphjlos mm ursi. On 

 the ascent to Lochnagar I found Betula nana, 

 Jimcus hifidus (in abundance). Azalea procumbens, 

 Aspidium lonchitis (rare), and, I believe, Polypo. 



