Vlantago media, Vris tuberbsa. 205 



" We have a specimen in which the stalk bears several spikes, 

 some sessile, others pendent on partial stalks, and the whole 

 intermixed with leaves disposed in a rose-like manner ; and 

 my friend Dr. Thompson found in Haiden Dean the rarer 

 monstrosity of several perfect heads on the summit of one 

 stalk." (George Johnston, M. D., in his Flora of Berwick 

 upon Tweed, i. 38.) 



Smith has noted, in his English Flora, i. 215., of P. lan- 

 ceolata, that " The spikes are liable to the very same trans- 

 formations as in P. major." 



Vlantago media with its Scape bearing, not a Spike of 

 Flowers, but numerous enlarged Bracteas disposed into a Tuft, 

 resembling, more or less, a many-petaled Rose Flower. — This 

 form is cultivated in some gardens, and, so far as I have 

 experienced, is constant, or very nearly so, to this character, 

 both in all the scapes it produces in any one year, and in all 

 successive years. I have often suspected that this is the form 

 implied under P. major 5 in Eng. Flor., i. 213., and as " The 

 rose-shaped variety . . . often kept in gardens, for the sake of 

 curiosity," noted in p. 214.; because I have never seen a form 

 of this character belonging to the species P. major. I have 

 never referred to the works cited in Eng. Flor., in identifica- 

 tion. The two species are distinguishable easily. — J. D. 



Vris tuberbsa grows wild in Cornwall (V. 200, 201.); some 

 Localities of it. — It grows in this neighbourhood, in Truciffe 

 Lane, on the top of a hedge, on the left-hand side as you turn 

 up from Love Lane, about fifty yards from the turn. At 

 Barfle, a small tenement belonging to Lady Davy, the 

 orchard is overrun with plants of it : they are, in fact, a per- 

 fect nuisance. I have been informed of two other places 

 where they grow ; but, as I have not examined these places, I 

 shall not mention them. — John Harvey, Druggist. Penzance, 

 Oct. 29. 1835. 



[I have noted in V. 201. certain differences that the figure of 

 2\\s tuberosa (given in IV. 29.) shows from the/Vis tuberosa 

 I had known. That figure is copied from that in Sibthorp's 

 and Smith's Flora Graca. Since the time of my noting this, 

 information of three species of /Vis with tuberous rootstalks, 

 and 4-edged leaves, has been published in Sweet's British 

 Flower-Garden, second series, t. 146., and the three grouped 

 into a genus, which R. A. Salisbury, Esq., had indicated long 

 before, in the Hort, Trans., and applied to it a term of Tour- 

 nefort's ; namely, Hermodactylus. (This is interpreted, in 

 Sweet's British Flower-Garden, Hermes, Mercury; daktylos, 

 finger; the semblance of the tubers to the human fingers.) 

 •The one figured in Sweet's British Flower-Garden is there 



Q 3 



