192 Botanical Notices from Spain. 



I noticed some gigantic shrubs of Kentrophyllum arborescens with 

 stems as thick as an arm, but already completely dried up. It was 

 here that the Andalusian robbers paid me a visit ; but fortunately I 

 escaped them by the speed of my horse. The very friendly town of 

 Motril lies at the foot of a limestone chain of hills planted with vines, 

 which surrounds the basis of the Sierra de Lujar, and at the com- 

 mencement of a wide fruitful plain, quite covered with the most 

 luxuriant fields of cotton, sugar-cane, batates and maize. The coast 

 is quite flat and very sandy ; Pancratium ?naritimum, L., blossomed 

 in parts in company with a Salsola, Kakile maritima, L., and Euphor- 

 bia Paralias, L. 'I'he last had past flowering, whilst on the banks 

 of the ditches of the above-mentioned plains and on grassy places 

 Panicum arenarium, Brot., Xanthium Strumarium, L., and Ricinus 

 communis, L., and in the cotton plantations Datura Stramonium, L., 

 are not rare. 



At the end of September I returned to Granada, and in the begin- 

 ning of October I made the last excursion, of four days, in the Sierra 

 Nevada, from whence I brought away little more than seed. The 

 fresh-fallen snow which already covered the mountain down to the 

 lower alpine region, prevented me from visiting the snow region, as 

 I had intended. A subsequent excursion to the neighbouring Sierra 

 of Alcafar yielded little beside a small form of Merendera Bulhoco- 

 dium. Crocus nudiflorus, Sm., and Satureja cuneifolia. Ten. The 

 summer months are not the most favourable months of the year for 

 botanizing in Andalusia, even in the mountains, as I have found by 

 experience ; but much the best time is the spring, from March to May, 

 and June and July for the mountains. On the arid hills around 

 Granada, the Artemisia Barrelieri, Boiss., which is here very frequent, 

 begins to flower in the end of October ; and about the same time I 

 found on moist shady places in the valley of the Darro the beau- 

 tiful Sternbergia lutea, Ker. {Amaryllis lutea, L.), which had not 

 hitherto been found in the kingdom of Granada. In the second half 

 of October it rained almost incessantly, which prevented my making 

 any distant excursions, but favoured the development of the Cryp- 

 togamous plants ; so that I have obtained a tolerable harvest of 

 lichens and liverworts during the latter part of my stay in Granada : 

 of the last species, besides several forms of the Pellia epipJiylla, I 

 found especially Marchantia paleacea, Bertol., everywhere in moist 

 shady places, common on walls and on stony sites and with spore^ 

 bearers ; on moist masses of rock I also gathered Targionia and Lunu- 

 laria vulgaris, Mich., both very beautiful and in rich fructification. 



