318 Mr. C. C. Babington on some species o/Epilobium. 



Arnott seem to throw some doubts upon its having been found in 

 Glen Tilt, but do not state the cause of them. My inquiries 

 and those of Mr. Borrer lead us to believe the statement of 

 Mr. Robertson. 



In the ' Botanist's Guide ' there are two stations given for a 

 plant there called E. angustissimum, both of which rest upon the 

 high authority of the late Mr. J. W. Griffith. These places are, 

 ^' Bocks near Twll du in Cwm Idwel/' and " Rocks of Arran 

 Pen Llyn.^' It has been generally taken for granted that the 

 plants noticed by Mr. Griffith were small states of E. angusti- 

 folium, but no botanist has, I believe, recorded his having re- 

 cently met with the plant of the latter station, and we have 

 therefore no means of knowing what it is. In the autumn of 

 1855 I gathered what seems to be a small form of E. angus- 

 tifolium upon the rocks rising from the lake called Llyn y Own, 

 which is close to Twll du. It had not flowered, nor did it show 

 any buds, and grows in the narrow crevices of the rock in such 

 a manner that I was unable to obtain a root for cultivation. It 

 should be remembered that the station called *' Rocks near 

 Twll du in Cwm Idwel " by Griffith, is stated by him (Bot. 

 Guide, i. 82) to be the spot named '' Hysvae ^' by Richardson in 

 the 3rd edition of Ray's ' Synopsis' (310), where he found the 

 Lysimachia Chamencerium dicta, flore Delphini of Parkinson, and 

 that there is every reason to suppose that Richardson, Griffith 

 and myself have successively gathered the same plant in the 

 same or closely contiguous spots. It is curious that Smith 

 should have taken no notice of these mountain stations. 



The true name of the plant found by Mr. Robertson is rather 

 difficult to determine, not from any doubt concerning the spe- 

 cies to which it belongs, but on account of some confusion 

 which has happened in the use of the several names of the allied 

 plants. The Perthshire plant is — 



E. DodoncEi, Villars (in part), Allioni, Gaudin (in part), Koch ; 



E. rosmarinifolium, Haenke, Reichenbach, Godron ; 



E. angustissimum^ Willdenow (in part), Bertoloni (not Curtis 

 nor Aiton), Waldstein and Kitaibel. 



Bertoloni and Godron appear to be justified by the description 

 given by Villars (Fl. Dauph. iii. 507) in considering that he in- 

 cluded under the name of E. Dodoncei both the small species 

 which are allied to E. angustifolium, and therefore have probably 

 exercised a sound judgement in rejecting that name. But the 

 former author seems to me to have fallen into an error in 

 thinking that the plant now under consideration is the E. angus- 

 tissimum of Aiton (Hort. Kew. ed. 1. ii. 5), and of Curtis (Bot. 

 Mag. 76), for the figure given by the latter author seems to fix 

 that name upon the other species, to which also Reichenbach 



