22 THE .TOTTRXVTi OF BOTAXT 



Britain, the Low Countries, northern France and Germany, and . 

 Scandinavia. In the Species Plantarum Linnaeus only mentions 

 England and Belgium as the habitat of Inula Helenium. 



This history has led Beck von Mannagetta in his " Inulse 

 Europeie'- (in Denkschr. Ak. Wien, xliv. (1881)) to maintain that 

 Inula Helenium is a native of middle Asia, and in Europe only sub- 

 spontaneous as an introduced alien ; an opinion re -asserted b}' him in 

 his Flora von Nieder Oesterreicli (1893), 1179, and accepted in 

 some more recent works. The species is no doubt spontaneous in 

 western Asia, but a reference to Boissier's Flora Orientalis is alone 

 safficient to refute Beck's statement as to Europe, except so far as 

 the northern and western parts of the continent are concerned. In 

 Fl. Or. iii. 186, in addition to the Asiatic distribution then known, 

 there are quoted localities in Greece and Macedonia where it is 

 inconceivable that this species can be other than a genuine wild 

 indigenous plant. Such are the middle region of Mount Kyllene in 

 the Peloponnesus, the foot of Mount Olympus, and the high pastures 

 of Scardus. 



In southern Italy, too, the plant is unquestionably indigenous. 



Trotter and Komano, who explored the valley of the Cervaro — 

 this valley is traversed by the old high-road, and now by the railway 

 from Na])les to Apulia, and under the name of Yal di Bovino was 

 notorious in the old days for brigandage and highway robbery — some 

 twenty- five miles S.W. of Foggia, on several occasions between 1910 

 and 1912, say (Nuot. Giorn. Bot. Ital. n. s. xxi. 402) that along 

 the river Cervaro and above it, in the short lateral valleys beneath 

 the wood " Macchione," there are found the most conspicuous asso- 

 ciations of Inula Helenium they know. In a level pasture near the 

 river the Inula forms a company of many hundred individuals, which 

 in July were opening their splendid heads of flower, giving to the 

 spot an unusual look of spring-like gaiety. The authors add, "Beck's 

 hypothesis that this Inula is to be considered a naturalised plant in 

 Europe therefore does not seem to us to be well-founded." Plate ix. 

 fig. 2 in the same publication shows one of the authors standing up 

 to his shoulders in this immense field of Elecampane. 



I have myself collected Inula Helenium in one of the wildest 

 regions of the southern Apennines, in clayey mountain-pastures 

 between Teggiano and Sacco, miles from any cultivation present or 

 past; on the other hand, it is not recorded from southern Ital}" anywhere 

 in the neighbourhood of gardens from which it might have escaped. 

 In Spain, too, according to Willkomm & Lange (Prodr. Fl. Hisp. ii. 

 46) it is found "in pratis et graminosis, ad fossas regionis montanae 

 Hispanise lorealis, cent al. et oriental, passim." This is not the 

 behaviour of an intiodiced alien. 



