28 ■ The Irish Naturalist. March, 



abundance in the cliffs above Sanders' Beach at East Looe, 

 Cornwall, where I was then staying. 



The plant probably derives its common name from the 

 hairs with which its parts are somewhat liberally covered. 

 These hairs are stiff, and w^hile some of them end in a 

 simple sharp point, others are branched at their apices, 

 the branches being bent over and forming minute sharp 

 hooks, three being the number usually present at the top 

 of each hair. These hooked hairs easily grip one's clothes 

 or the natural coverings of other passing animals, and 

 possibly play some part, as will be discussed presently, in 

 effecting the plant's dissemination. 



The head of flowers is surrounded (as is usual in the 

 Compositae) with an involucre of bracts. The five outer 

 phyllariesj^of this involucre are large and more or less 

 cordate or sagittate in shape. They are well provided 

 with hooked hairs, particularly on their margins. These 

 cover about ten other bracts, almost linear in shape, and 

 these in turn cover eight larger ones, each with a swollen, 

 keeled base (concave on its inner face) and a tapering 

 apex, the midrib being prolonged beyond the bract as a 

 sort of awai which has a more or less feathery appearance, 

 owing to its covering of longish hairs. 



The eight innermost bracts are provided with both 

 plain and hook-topped stiff hairs, and they are generally 

 arranged in two whorls of four each, alternating with one 

 another. 



The flowers surrounded by this somewhat complex 

 involucre are all ligulate. The number present in each 

 head varies with the size of the head. In twenty heads 

 selected at random, the number varied from fifty-one to 

 eighty-three, the average being sixt3^-seven. 



At the flowering stage a casual look seemed to show that 

 all the flowers were exactly alike, but careful examination 

 showed that this was not strictly correct. Although no 

 differences whatever could be seen in the corollas, stamens, 

 styles and stigmas of the various flowers there were, in each 

 head, a few individuals situated at the periphery of the 

 disc, in which the transition from pistil to the, as yet, 

 non-elongated pappus-stalk was much less abrupt than iu 



