86 Localities of Habitats 



Gastridium lendigerum. — I found this rare grass in a very 

 luxuriant state, in a fallow near Hastings, last August. Knapp's 

 figure of it {Gramina Britan.) is miserably deficient, and but 

 for the accompanying dissections would hardly be recognised. 



Polygonum dumetorum L. — First detected by Alexander 

 Hankey, Esq., of London, in a wood near Wimbledon, in 

 1834. The spot where my own specimens were found, was 

 in a wood immediately opposite the house of Sir C. C. Pepys, 

 the present Master of the Rolls, facing which there is a gate, 

 on entering which a few yards within the wood, the polygonum 

 will be seen climbing over some low bushes, but confined to 

 a spot of limited extent. Mr. Hankey was kind enough 

 to point out the exact locality, from which, in July or August 

 last (1835), I gathered specimens in high perfection, as re- 

 garded the beautifully winged fruit. It is unquestionably the 

 Polygonum dumetorum of Continental authors, as I have 

 carefully compared the descriptions of Pollich, Krocker, Host, 

 Wahlenberg, &c, with the recent plant from Wimbledon, 

 and find them coincide in every respect. Wahlenberg, in the 

 Flora Upsalensis, looks upon P. dumetorum as merely a 

 variety of P. Convolvulus; his words are, u non nisi forma 

 magis sylvestris praecedentis ; " but, in the Flora Suecica of the 

 same author, published many years subsequently, the same 

 opinion is not expressed. No one but himself seems to have 

 entertained the same doubt, which the numerous differences 

 in the two species, pointed out by Mr. Babington in an able 

 paper on the genus Polygonum, lately read to the Linnsean 

 Society, demonstrate to be untenable. 



Scorpiiirus sulcdtus. — Three specimens of a scorpiurus an- 

 swering to the above were gathered by a young lady of this 

 town, last July (1835), amongst wheat in Battersea Fields, the 

 attempt to determine the nature of which, by reference to 

 Smith's English Flora, occasioned her, as may be conceived, 

 no small degree of trouble and loss of time. Two of these 

 examples, in flower and fruit, are in my possession, but were 

 doubtless imported along with foreign corn, amongst which 

 the various species of this genus are not unfrequent in many 

 parts of the south of Europe. A subsequent search on the 

 same spot was quite unsuccessful. 



Mespilus germanica. — In No. 55. of this Magazine, Mr. 

 Trevelyan, in an interesting list of new localities for rare 

 plants [VIII. 631,632.], mentions [p. 632.] the thorny va- 

 riety of M. germanica as growing in hedges between Tunbridge 

 Wells and Penshurst. The tree is by no means uncommon 

 in the vicinity of Hastings, and is always spinous, flowering 

 abundantly, but fruiting sparingly ; the wild medlar is about 



