PLANTS OF GLEN SPEAX, WESTERN ESS 183 



The name L. complanatum^ which I adopted for the Gloster 

 plant, was only chosen after consultation with some of our leading 

 botanists. Mr. Carruthers kindly drew up the description which 

 was published in the November number of the "Journal of Botany"' 

 for 1882. On page 381 in the same year, and in the ''Proceedings of 

 Linn. Soc. " 1883, p. 2, Mr. J. G. Baker is stated to have exhibited a 

 specimen collected by Professor Lawson in Skye, as true complan- 

 atum, to a meeting of the Linnaean Society. An editorial note in the 

 "Journal of Botany," 1882, p. 381, states that a Forfar specimen was 

 also found to be complanatum. In the supplement to his "Manual" 

 Professor Babington quotes Hants, Gloster, Worcester, Ross, and Skye, 

 for complanatum; while in the third edition of the "Students' Flora," 

 1884, Sir J. D. Hooker treats the Linnasan complanatum as an 

 aggregate species, with two sub-species : viz. (1) L. complanatum 

 proper "from Gloster and Worcester . . . leafy branches, longer, 

 less crowded ; leaves dimorphic, central ones on the flattened stem 

 more erect and narrower than the lateral ; spikes usually several, 

 peduncled." (2) L. alpinum, L. — "Leafy branches, shorter, more 

 crowded, not flattened ; leaves uniform ; spikes solitary, sessile." 

 This latter description of the leaves, branches, and spike, would 

 exclude the Gloster plant, since the leafy branches are long and lax, 

 and conspicuously flattened, the leaves are dimorphic, and in my 

 specimen the three fruiting peduncles bear respectively two, three, and 

 four sessile spikes. The wording of the description of complanatum, 

 i.e. " spikes usually several, peduncled," is not free from ambiguity. 

 It may be read "spikes pedunculate, usually several," but this does 

 not suit the British specimens, since these have sessile spikes. It 

 probably intends "spikes usually several, usually peduncled." This 

 would admit the Gloster plant, but as certainly alters the specific 

 character given by Linnaeus. It was this presumed alteration of 

 the description given in the "Species Plantarum," and the doubt 

 which existed in my own mind of our having the true complanatum 

 in Britain, which led me to write L. complanatum, L. ' Hook, lil..' 

 when recording the occurrence of the flattened form of /.. alpinum 

 from the Cairngorms, etc., in the "Journal of Botany,'" [888, p. 26, 

 and still more recently as L. alpinum, I -• : var. decipiens. Dr. 

 Boswell wished me to let him have the Gloster specimen to figure 

 in "English Botany"; and in December [882 he wrote me thus: 

 "I do not think the plate in last number of Journ. Hot. 

 represents the complanatum \ but 1 am in correspondence with 

 Messrs. Newbould and Baker about it. But for Mr. Baker's decided 

 opinion upon the Gloster and Skye plants 1 would have no doubt 

 about supposed complanatum being really alpinum." Professor 

 Babington, in February 1883, on receipt <>t" a specimen from Ross 



shire wrote : " I see the name is confirmed by Mr. Baker. I also 



have a bit of Professor Lawson's Skye species named by him. It seems 



