T902. Prakgbr. — Sojnc Plants of the North-east Coast. 201 



not previously known so far north in the east of Ireland; also 

 Anthriscus vulparis. By the Boyne, a mile below Drogheda, 

 were Torilis 7iodosa, Salvia Verbenaca, and Allittm viJieale, rare 

 in Louth. 



A few da^'s later T had an opportunity of attempting to 

 verify another old record for Trifolium striatum, namel}^ that 

 of Whitehead in Antrim, by far its most northerly station in 

 Ireland. It was collected about here in the sixties by several 

 botanists of the last generation, and John Templeton had pre- 

 viously (181 1 ) gathered it at Rhanbuoy, a few miles to the 

 westward ; but it had not been seen in the North-eastern dis- 

 trict since. Walking from Whitehead towards Kilroot to 

 examine the interesting fossiliferous glacial gravels recently 

 discovered at Cloghan by Mr. Welch, the plant turned up at 

 once, in profusion, on the bank over the railway line just 

 be^^ond the tunnel. Thence I traced it as far as Cloghan 

 Harbour ; and then climbing the steep slopes, it was found to 

 be abundant right up to the county road, nearly 300 feet above 

 the sea. I traced it back along the road, growing on each 

 side, to the rock-cutting at the right-angle turn just above 

 Whitehead. Over this area, a space of about three-eighths by 

 one-eighth of a mile, wherever the ground is dry and the 

 herbage low, T. striatum grows in the greatest abundance 

 among Thyimis, Anthyllis, Lotiis corniculatics , Trifolium minus^ 

 T. procuvihens, Medicago hiptdijia, and so on. With it in some 

 places grew T. ag7'a7itim, which had apparently spread from 

 little cultivated patches hard by. I hope local botanists will 

 now look for T. striatinn at Rhanbuoy. 



Essays to verify some of Templeton's local records were not 

 so successful. He noted Epipadis palustris *'in a marshy 

 field on the shore of Belfast Lough half a mile above Knock- 

 magunny Hill," and Tiigonclla ornithopodioides " on a gravelly 

 bank sloping to the sea at the north end of the Kinnegar at 

 Holywood." The first is a widespread Central Plain plant, not 

 seen in the north-east for over half a century ; the latter a 

 rare east-coast species of very local occurrence, excluded as 

 casual in "Flora N.E. Ireland." For the first I searched the 

 meadows from Sydenham to Holj^wood without success ; but 

 there is plenty of suitable ground there with abundance of 

 Orchis maculata and O. hicarnata —indeed, I never saw else- 

 where such splendid profusion of the latter; and I shall not 



