150 



On the Discovery of Cnicus tuberosus at Avebury y Wilts. 

 . By Professor BUCKMAN, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.A.S. &c. 



READ GTH OCTOBER 1857. 



IN reporting upon our meeting at Avebury, Wilts, on July 15, 

 1856, I took occasion to remark upon some interesting plants 

 which I had obtained from the Druidical Circle ; and amongst 

 notes upon others, will be found the following : 



" Cnicus acaulis, Steraless Thistle, with anomalous as it ap- 

 pears stems several inches high. This is one of the forms 

 which has given rise to the many, synonyms by which the true 

 species is surrounded*/' 



In July of the present year, I found myself at the Avebury 

 Circle, in company with my friend Edwin Lees, Esq., F.L.S., 

 F.G.S., when this Thistle was more minutely examined by us ; 

 and, upon carefully getting some specimens up by the roots, we 

 were pleased to find that it agreed in this and other respects 

 with the Cnicus tuberosus, Willd., Tuberous Plume Thistle, a 

 specimen of which appears to have been sent by A. B. Lambert, 

 Esq., to Sir J. E. Smith, and is figured in ' English Botany/ 

 t. 2562, to the description of which is appended the following 

 habitat : " A copse-wood, called Great Ridge, on the Wiltshire 

 Downs, between Boyton House and Fonthill, abundantly :" and 

 Smith states that he there gathered it in 1819 f- 



For many years, however, this form appears to have become 

 extinct in this its original habitat ; and it was thought to have 

 bee"n entirely lost to our flora until within the last few months, 

 when my friend Mr. W. Cunnington of Devizes fortunately dis- 

 covered that a nurseryman in his neighbourhood had propagated 

 the plant from its original stock presented to the nurseryman 

 by Lambert himself. The two or three specimens thus handed 

 down are now in Mr. Cunnington's possession ; and upon paying 

 him a visit at Devizes, on our way from Avebury to Stonehenge, 

 I was gratified to see a specimen in full flower in his garden, as 

 well as two dried examples in his herbarium ; from an examina- 

 tion of these, I am enabled to declare their complete identity 

 with those I had so recently gathered at Avebury. 



Here, then, we have a curious example of a plant having been 



* Address to the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, by Prof. Buckraan, 

 Jan. 27, 1857, p. viii. 



t English Flora, vol. iii. p. 393. 



