Mr. C. C. Babington on some British species cf (Enanthe. 99 



I now proceed to notice two English plants contained in my 

 own herbarium, but previously take the opportunity of suggest- 

 ing that, as it is not improbable that the form of the radical 

 knobs varies in different states of the same plant or at different 

 seasons of the year, it would be advisable that they should always 

 be examined at the same stage of the plant's development, namely, 

 when the fruit of the primary umbel is well-formed but the se- 

 condary umbels still bear flowers. One of my English specimens 

 was gathered ten years since at Cambridge, and unfortunately does 

 not possess the root or fruits ; in other respects it agrees pretty 

 well with Mr. Ball's description of (E. silaifolia, although not 

 quite with sufficient exactness to allow me to state with certainty 

 that they are the same plant. The other English specimens in 

 my possession have been given to me by the Rev. A. Bloxam, by 

 whom they were gathered at Sutton Wharf in Leicestershire. 

 These possess the roots of (E. peucedanifolia ; the radical and 

 lowest stem leaves are absent, but all the others have short, linear, 

 acute segments, and the lower ones are bipinnate, whilst the 

 upper are nearly, and the uppermost quite, simply pinnate. Un- 

 fortunately the fruit is very young, but yet shows very decided 

 marks of having a thickened base. On the whole, I am inclined 

 to consider all my English specimens as referable to the (E. silai- 

 folia of Koch but not of Bieberstein. 



From the above it seems to me that we are authorized to con- 

 clude that more than one species passes under the name of (E. 

 peucedanifolia of Smith, and I trust that I may venture to ask 

 English botanists to favour me by the communication of speci- 

 mens possessing both fruit and roots, in order to enable me to 

 endeavour to clear up this difficulty in a future edition of my 

 c Manual of British Botany/ 



The root of (E. Lachenalii, which, as Mr. Ball justly observes, 

 is by far the most common of these plants in Britain, appears 

 to differ considerably according to the state of the plant ; young 

 seedlings and the offsets of old plants having slender branched 

 fibrous roots. On flowering plants the fibres are simple, stout, 

 and pretty uniformly thick throughout the greater part of their 

 length; not clavate nor fusiform, nor nodulose. The radical 

 fibres of fruiting individuals usually thicken gradually, but not 

 very greatly through a considerable portion of their length, and 

 are then narrowed quickly, but not abruptly, into the slender 

 fibrous extremity. Old plants which, late in the autumn, have 

 perfected their fruit and are dying down to the ground, have 

 their radical fibres irregularly thickened throughout at least half 

 of their length, not at all clavate, and too irregular to deserve the 

 name of cylindrical or fusiform. 



I have but little objection to make to Mr. Ball's description of 



H 2 



