114 MR. JOSEPH woods' NOTES OF A BOTANICAL 



Indian corn and the larger vegetables. It is stemless, with an 

 umbel of lilac flowers, and an anther-like double gland at the 

 extremity of each sepal. The bulb is exceedingly compound, 

 throwing off as the plant advances a great number of bulbels, and 

 as it propagates itself also by seed, it is become a great pest 

 in all the cultivated land. It is a recent addition to the Spanish 

 flora, and is believed to have been introduced among some hay 

 imported from South America for the use of the British legion. 



Another plant of doubtful history which I must not omit to 

 mention is a Lathyrus having much the appearance of the common 

 sweet-pea, but with rather smaller flowers and a standard of deeper 

 purple. The pod is however very different, quite smooth, much 

 longer than that of L. odoratus, and with a greater number of con- 

 tiguous, sessile seeds, which are somewhat mottled when ripe. It 

 is, I believe, perennial, though where I saw it, it was growing 

 abundantly in the midst of a bed of sweet-peas in Mr. Sewell's 

 garden. It appears that Mr. Sewell's gardener had gathered 

 seeds of Lathyrus sylvestris, which grows just outside the gate of 

 the premises, and had mixed them with sweet-pea seeds, and he 

 believes that the plant in question is a hybrid between L. odoratus 

 and L. sylvestris. This seems very improbable; because the 

 plant in question is earlier in flowering than either of its supposed 

 parents, and because it forms a fuller pod than either of them, 

 and with apparently perfect seeds. 



Among the later plants which are found in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of Santander, I mil mention Inula critlimoides, 

 Lavatera cretica, which takes the place of our Malva sylvestris, 

 Lepidium Draha, Linu/m gallicum, Linu/m strictmn, Lobelia urens, 

 Lotus hispidus, Lythrum Preslii, Malva parvijlora, Polycarpon 

 tetrapJiyllum, Scirpus Savii (there is no Scirpus setaceus), Scirpus 

 nigricans, Scorzonera humilis, Silene nutans, and Viola lactea of 

 Smith. Lythrum Preslii was first noticed by Gussone, but is 

 not admitted as a species in the ' Flora Italica ' of Bertoloni, that 

 writer considering it as a variety of L. Orcsfferi. It is however a 

 much handsomer plant. The flowers are a great deal larger, 

 while the teeth of the calyx are smaller and less unequal. Gussone 

 describes the plant as suberect and the stem as winged, neither 

 of which I found to be correct, though the stem has occasionally 

 the appearance of a wing on one angle ; a circumstance which 

 occurs sometimes also in L. Grcefferi. The leaves are somewhat 

 cordate at the base, but foliis ohlongis, hasi suhcordatis would be 

 a more exact description than foliis cordato-6[)\on^^. We find 



