SHORT NOTES. 9 



where alone it is undoubtedly native. It appears to be readily esta- 

 blished in suitable situations. 



CoLEANTHUS SUBTILIS, Seidel. — British botanists, especially those 

 in the south-west of England, should be on the look-out for this very 

 distinct and singular little grass, which M. Sirodot has lately been find- 

 ing in numerous localities in the department lUe-et-Vilaine, north-west 

 France. It had been previously found in three isolated localities in 

 Brittany, but at intervals and in small quantities. M. Sirodot states 

 (Ann. Sc. Nat. (Bot.) ser. 5, vol. x. p. 65) that the plant grows only on 

 the fine sandy shore left exposed by the partial drying up of large deep 

 ponds, and that it is in flow'er from the end. of August till the beginning 

 of November. So, too, Sternberg noticed (Eegensb. Flora, vol. ii. 

 p. 7) near Wosseck, in Bohemia, that the seeds did not germinate 

 when submerged, but required a hot season and consequent sub- 

 sidence of the water. 1868, the year M. Sirodot discovered the grass 

 in so many stations, was one very favourable to its growth. Besides 

 the Bohemian locality, long the only one known, and one in Moravia, 

 Coleanthus subtilis occurs near Christiania, Norway, but has not hither- 

 to been collected elsewhere in Europe. The original figure in Tratti- 

 nick's ' Flora des Oesterreichischen Kaiserthumes,' vol. i., under the 

 name of Schmidtia subtilis, is a good one, and so is that in Nees, Gen. 

 Fl. Germ. (Gram.) t. 27 ; a luxuriant plant is drawn in Regensb. Flora, 

 vol. ii. (^Schmidtia utriculosa), and there is an indifferent drawing in 

 Eeichb. Ic. Fl. Germ. vol. i. n. 1468. 



Fertilization of Ruscus aculeatus. — Can any botanist give 

 me a clue to the mode of fertilizalion of Ruscus aculeatus ? It is 

 always described as truly dioecious. With most of our dioecious plants, 

 which flower very early in the season, or even with those in which the 

 flowers are unisexual, tlie male flowers are so arranged, in catkins or 

 otherwise, that the pollen is dispersed by every breath of wind, and 

 some of it can hardly fail to fall on the female flowers. In Ruscus, on 

 the other hand, the rigid pseudo-leaves, which bear the flowers, would 

 hardly be at all disturbed even by a heavy gale; and, in addition, the 

 plant generally grows under the protection of Holly or some other 

 evergreen shrub. The time of flowering, in the depth of winter, not 

 March and April, as very commonly stated, would seem to preclude 

 the suggestion that it depends normally on insect-agency for its fertili- 

 zation. — Alfred W. Bennett, 3, Park Fillaqe East, London. 



