420 ICOSANDRIA— POLYGYNIA. Potentilla. 



P. verna /3. Wahlenh. Lapp. 146. 



P. verna y. Nestl. Potent. 52. 



Fragaria n. 1 1 19 /3. Hall. Hist. v. 2. 48. 



On mountains in Scotland, the north of England, and Wales. 



On Ben Lawers, and other mountains in Bredalbane. Mr. J. 

 Mackay. In the county of Durham. Rev. Mr. Harriman. On 

 rough stony ground at Hafod, Cardiganshire. 



Perennial. July. 



Root rather woody, greatly subdivided at the crown, bearing nu- 

 merous stems, which are decumbent at the base, then ascending, 

 from 4 to 8 or 10 inches high, branched, leafy, loosely hairy, 

 somewhat compressed. Radical leaves on long, loosely hairy, 

 footstalks; leciflets 5, very rarely 7, more or less clothed with 

 long, coarse, spreading hairs ; all wedge-shaped, entire in their 

 lower halfj in the upper deeply cut, almost palmate, the seg- 

 ments bluntish, broad and distant, generally unequal ; the lower 

 pair smallest, most cut and dilated at their outer or lower mar- 

 gin : stem-leaves much smaller and nearly sessile, of 3 wedge- 

 shaped, more deeply and acutely cut leaflets. Stipulas of the 

 lowermost leaves narrow and united to the footstalks for about 

 half their own length, then spreading, lanceolate, acute, entire j 

 those of the stem-leaves shorter, ovate, sometimes cut, gradu- 

 ally diminishing to bracteas. Flower-stalks axillary and terminal, 

 long, simple, hairy, not very numerous. Calyx externally hairy, 

 its segments acute, somewhat unequal. Pet. as long as the 

 calyx or longer, inversely heart-shaped, of an orange or tawny 

 yellow. Seeds rather few, ovate, compressed, keeled, obscurely 

 wrinkled. Recept. slightly hairy. 



I am greatly obliged to my friend Mr. Haller jun. for correcting 

 me on the subject of our British plant, always called Potentilla 

 aurea, about which I have often had doubts. His illustrious father, 

 it seems, confounded our plant with verna. So great an error 

 may plead my excuse for mistaking it, as Linnaeus himself at 

 one time did, for the Linnsean aurea, Haller's ??. 1122. t.2l.f. 4, 

 which my wild British specimens nearly resemble. It is singular 

 that some cultivated ones, whose roots came from Ben Lawers, 

 should have helped to verify, beyond all doubt, the synonym of 

 Hsenke, whose figure in Jacq. Ic. Rar. strikingly accords with 

 them, being taken from a very luxuriant, if not a garden, plant. 

 P. alpestris is an extremely variable species j but the entiiie 

 bases of its wedge-shaped leciflets, and the deep wide segments 

 of their upper part, destitute of the silvery margin of P. aurea, 

 are characteristic. The stem is represented too short in Engl. 

 Bot., as Wahlenberg well remarks ; but the leaves are correct. 

 Those in Fl. Dan. are less exact. I think hov/ever there can be 

 no question about any of the synonyms given above. Mr. Se- 

 ringue is not happy in his representation of the leajlels, at least 

 of his cultivated specimen. 



