SHORT NOTES 



301 



within a radius of several miles, is growing on a tree sixteen feet 

 distant from the aforesaid female plant, in a due north line. Both 

 these plants are about the same height from the ground on their 

 respective hosts. No other bar, beyond that of the sixteen feet of 

 distance, was put to prevent pollination. The result has been that 

 the female plant has set less than half its usual quantity of berries, 

 or, it may be, not much more than a third. Excellent weather, with 

 plenty of sun, lasted all the time the plants were in flower, and as the 

 wind was always S.W. it is difficult to see how the pollen could have 

 been carried by its means. The only insects seen on the flowers were 

 one or two minute midges. — Ethelbert Horne. 



Lathrj-ia Squamaria L. parasitic on Yew. A few months 

 ago I received from the Duke of Wellington some specimens of 

 Lathrcea, from Ewhurst, in the north of Hampshire, apparently 

 parasitically attached to the roots of yew. The species is recorded 

 as " under yew-trees " from the same neighbourhood (Townsend, 

 Flora of Hampshire, ed. 2, p. 289) ; and, as it is also stated to grow 

 on beech, hornbeam, poplar, whitethorn, and {teste Bell's Selborne, 

 ii. 241) on plum, as well as the more frequent elm and hazel, it 

 would seem not to be particular as to its host plant. This new 

 record, however, has another interest in that the Duke, corroborated 

 by a clergyman of the neighbourhood, speaks of the plant as fami- 

 liarly known for many years in Wiltshire as " cuckoo-flower " — a 

 name which is not recorded for this species in Britten and Holland's 

 Dictionary of English Plant Names, although doubly appro- 

 priate, from its season of flowering and from its parasitic habit. — ■ 



(jr. S. BoULGER. 



Carex rulicaris forma Montana (see pp. 106, 146). On the 

 6th September last 1 noticed this sedge in good fruit in several spots 

 in Cwm Idwal, Carnarvonshire, and its perigynia were in no cases 

 regularly deflexed, as in the specific type, although the bracts were 

 mostly fallen. The fruits, which appeared darker in colour than in 

 the lowland form, were sometimes suberect, sometimes deflexed, and 

 often patent-divaricate. While the plant was of dwarf growth in 

 relatively dry situations, on very wet rocks it sometimes became 

 elongate and as tall as the type. A few days later 1 again met with 

 this sedge in abundance and showing the same fruiting characters on 

 the wet rocks of Eoel Eras (alt. 2500 ft.).— H. W. Pugsley. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



The Kew Bulletin (No. 5, August) contains a paper on the 

 Winteracece, by Mr. J. Hutchinson, which includes " a Key to the 

 families more closely related to Magnoliacese ; the group may take 

 ordinal rank as Mag noli 'ales. ," Mr. Hutchinson also contributes an 

 account of Therorhodion — a genus established by J. K. Small for the 

 section of Rhododendron so named by Maximowicz — of which three 

 species are described. Mr. John Parkinson gives a full account of 



