Cardamine Pmtensis. 65 



D. Wheeler, to whose kind assistance about that time I 

 am much indebted for the knowledge I possess of plants 

 indigenous to this neighbourhood. That gentleman for- 

 warded a specimen to Professor Lindley, who expressed 

 much interest in it, and wrote a paragraph on the subject 

 in the Gardener's Chronicle. Plants of the same abnormal 

 character appeared more abundantly in the same place in 

 1860 ; and every year afterwards some might be found. 

 In 1863 Mr. A. Irvine noticed it in the Phytologist, having 

 received a specimen from me. In 1870 I sent a specimen 

 to Dr. Hooker, who, in acknowledging its receipt, said that 

 he had seen the same variety both in England and Scotland, 

 and that it was described in Dr. Masters' '' Vegetable 

 Teratology." There is, how^ever, some difference between 

 the plant described therein and the form I now notice, in 

 that my plant has a perfectly double flower contained 

 within the valves of the ovary as a calyx, showing a mul- 

 tiplication of petals, as in a double stock or wallflower, but 

 no stamens. The stamens of the original flower, out of 

 which the second one proceeds, commonly appear in due 

 order, but sometimes they are rather petaloid. Thus for 

 more than twenty years, and possibly much longer, has 

 this variety retained its abnormal character as faithfully 

 as if it were that of a species. The year before last I 

 transferred a plant of it to my garden, where it became 

 quite at home and flowered well last spring. In vegetative 

 growth it also showed that reproductive energy which is 

 often found in plants with double flowers incapable of 

 yielding seed. Not only did the flowering stem give 

 origin to branches which, being laid down on the ground, 

 became separate young plants, flowering last spring; but 

 in the autumn the larger leaves which lay upon the ground 

 sent out roots at the bases of their leaflets, while tiny 

 leaves arose above, so as to form young plants capable of 

 independent growth before the leaflets upon which they 

 grew had lost their living green colour. A plant which in 

 such a winter as we have just passed through could live 

 and increase thus may be regarded as very susceptible of 

 cultivation, for which its native beauty and the scientific 



