34 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



A. vulgaris inLinnaeus's own writings. In the "Flora Suecica," 

 ed. i. p. 48 (1745), he distinguishes, under No. 135, the 

 number which is appropriated for the first time to A. vulgaris 

 in the " Sp. PL," ed. i. (1753), a var. b, " Alchemilla perennis 

 viridis major, foliis ex luteo virentibus. Morison, " Hist." ii. p. 

 1 95," 1 and adds a note, " Nostra planta communis {A. vulgaris, 

 a) erectior villosa et viridis est, at varietas b foliis magis 

 glabris, caulibus procumbentibus magis viridis subluteis, 

 rarissima, uti in quibusdam campis arenosis exaridis, rarius 

 Upsaliae obvia " ; and in the second edition of the " Flora 

 Suecica," p. 50 (1755), he supplements this note with a fuller 

 description of his A. vulgaris, a, from which the following 

 passages are extracted : "Caules plures debiles .- . . adspersi 

 pilis albis patulis . . . folio reniformi globo obtuso plicato, 

 ante explicationem lateribus involuto, margine circumserrato, 

 subpiloso praesertim apice." The observations of Linnaeus 

 show undoubtedly, that by A. vulgaris, a, is meant the wide- 

 spread plant with a stem rising from a decumbent base, and 

 clothed with spreading hairs, and with leaves which are hairy 

 on the margin, at least when they unfold : the plant, there- 

 fore, which is numbered 8 1 6 in the present list. When 

 Willdenow calls A. vulgaris, L., glabrous, he uses the term 

 with some incorrectness, and must be understood to mean 

 that A. vulgaris, L., is glabrous in comparison with the other 

 AlcJicmilla which he formerly, erroneously, took for A. 

 Jiybrida, L., and subsequently named A. montana. That is to 

 say, while the leaves of A. vulgaris, a, L., when fully grown, 

 often lose the hairs on the lower side and on the margin, 

 those of A. moittana, Willd., are permanently clothed with a 

 dense overlay of silky soft hairs. The flower-stalks also, and 

 the outer side of the calyx-tips, which are glabrous in A. 

 vulgaris, L., are densely covered with gray hairs, both when 

 the flowers open and when the fruit is ripe. The physiog- 

 nomic impression which we receive from A. montana owing 

 to the covering of hairs is strikingly different from that given 

 by A. vulgaris. Physiognomically A. montana, Willd., is not 

 unlike A. hybrida, ~L.(A. ptibescens, M. B.), and we can under- 

 stand how Willdenow previously confounded A. montana with 

 A. Jiybrida, L. 



1 Unfortunately no specimen of this is contained in the Morisonian herbarium. 

 — G. C. D. 



