278 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



long by 4 cm. broad ; the female area of the spadix 4 cm. long, 

 the male 7*5 cm., including the sterile portion of 2*5 cm. ; the 

 ovary 2 mm. long, the stamens 2*5 mm. by 1*5 mm. broad across 

 the top. 



The species is most nearly allied to P. canncBfoUum, but is dis- 

 tinguished by its more shortly stalked elliptic-ovate leaves, which 

 show, moreover, no pre-eminent secondary veins. 



The plant is in the collection of Mr. A. H. Smee, at Hack- 

 bridge, Surrey, where it flowered six years ago, and again early 

 last April, opening with daylight and beginning to close about 

 five o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Smee received it some years 

 ago from General Macdonnell, from Rio de Janeiro. There is no 

 information as to where it was collected, but presumably it was in 

 the neighbourhood of Rio, or at some spot within easy access. 



SHORT NOTES. 



Middlesex Orchids. — In this Journal for 1890 (p. 120) I referred 

 to the remarkable abundance of orchids on our chalk hills in the 

 summer of 1889, especially mentioning Orchi-s pyramidalis as thickly 

 covering the Harefield and Springwell downs. Since that date not 

 a single plant has appeared above ground. Even should it reappear 

 next June, thirteen years must surely be an abnormally long period 

 of rest, and the fact that the longest previous gap was five years 

 only, goes far to suggest that it is so. I was at first inclined to 

 attribute this failure to the persistent droughts we have experienced 

 since 1891, but 0. latifoHa failed to appear in the marshy Frogs' 

 Meadows, and, on the other hand, Ophnjs muscifera came up on the 

 chalk every year without a break : these instances lend little support 

 to the theory. In any case the behaviour of the orchid tribe is, to 

 me, a perpetual puzzle. The lavish distribution of 1889 would 

 seem to have been general, for, botanizing, on the Surrey hills in 

 June and July of that year, I found the same profusion everywhere, 

 and it would be interesting to learn if a similar scarcity up to the 

 present time has been noticed in that and other districts. I may 

 add that, whilst searching for Gymnadenia conopsea (last seen in 

 1891) under Garret Wood, near Springwell Lock, I gathered 

 HeHanthemum vulgare, a common species which, strange to say, 

 has not yet been reported from Middlesex. — J. Benbow. 



RuBiA ROTUNDiFOLiA Bauks & Sol. — Tliis species, although duly 

 included in the Index Kewensis, seems to have been overlooked by 

 systematists : it is not mentioned in DC. Frodromus, or in the 

 Flora Orientalis. It is, however, duly published with a short 

 diagnosis — *' foliis quaternis sessilibus subrotundo-ovatis acuminatis 

 ciliatis utrinque laevibus, caule inermi" — in Russell's Natural History 

 of Aleppo, ed. 2, ii. 267 (1794) ; and a comparison of specimens 

 shows its identity with B. Aucheri Boiss. (Diagn. Ser. i. iii. 54 

 (1843)), a name which it displaces. Patrick Russell's plants are 

 in the National Herbarium ; the specimen in question is labelled 



