Notes on the Dublin Flora. 9 



Dublin County is botanically interesting in several respects. 

 The flora is decidedly a rich one — as floras go in Ireland ; 

 witness the number of species enumerated in Mr. Hart's 

 "Flora of Howth." As the result of a season's rambling in 

 County Dublin, following on a somewhat intimate acquaint- 

 ance with the flora of Antrim and Down, the present writer 

 has been struck with the fact that while there is hardly a plant 

 of common occurrence in the latter portion of Ireland that is 

 not equally common in County Dublin, there are in Dublin 

 quite a number of common species which we have been 

 accustomed to reckon as rarities or desiderata in the North- 

 east. Such, for instance, are Ranunculus circinatus, Galium 

 mollugo, Dipsacus sylvestris, Erigeron acris, Senecio erucifolius, 

 Tragopogo?i pratensis, Thrincia hirta, Leontodon hispidum, 

 Crepis taraxacifolia, Galeopsis ladanum, Orchis pyramidalis, 

 Glyceria aquatica, Bromus erectus, B. sterilis, Hordeum murinum ; 

 but it is to be noted that some of these are plants of the lime- 

 stone plain, and are to be found in equal abundance from 

 Dublin to Galway, and from Fermanagh to Cork ; and that 

 others occur plentifully over the southern half of Ireland. 

 Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the Dublin flora, 

 certainly the one which first strikes a comparative stranger, 

 is the number of plants of various degrees of naturalization — 

 colonists, denizens, waifs — which it contains. What an in- 

 teresting paper Mr. More or Mr. Colgan could give us on the 

 casuals of County Dublin ; only the other day Dr. Percival 

 Wright told me quite a botanical fairy story of strange flowers 

 which he and the late Canon Grainger used to collect in years 

 gone by down at the North Lots, where their appearance was, 

 no doubt, intimately connected with the import trade at the 

 docks. Even as it has been historically, so botanically, Dublin 

 appears to have been for invaders a convenient landing-place 

 in Ireland. Some of these new-comers have been mere 

 phytological nomads, springing up unexpectedly for a season, 

 and vanishing as rapidly as they came. Such apparently were 

 Alyssum calycinum, Medicago maadata, M. denticulata, Centaurea 

 paniculata, C. solstitialis, Atropa belladonna, and other species ; 

 while in Appendix III. of his " Flora of Howth," Mr. Hart 

 gives a list of most unexpected exotics found in that neigh- 

 bourhood. In this category may also be placed a peculiar 



group of aliens which Mr. M'Ardle and I found last season in 



B 



