SnORT NOTES 355 



Grisebach, Ueber die Bildung des Torfs in den Emsmooren, &c. 

 (1846), p. 25 ? From the remarks of Sonder and Garche, I should be 

 inclined to think they were the same, but I have no means of seeing the 

 original description. Perhaps someone who has will look it up, and 

 see if there are specimens in our Herbaria. Grisebach's plant has 

 occurred in Germany (near Hamburg, Ostfreisland, &c), Holland, 

 and Switzerland. — A. Bennett. 9. 10. 06."] 



Plantago lanceolata L. Since May 1919 I have had under 

 observation plants which differ from the type in the following 

 characters. The stamens remain erect or almost so, and do not 

 become as squarrose as in the type ; the filaments are shorter ; the 

 anthers are greenish-yellow, and longly-elliptical instead of whitish 

 and oblong-spheroidal as in the type. Many normal plants grew in 

 the vicinity of the original station, and I was at first inclined to 

 regard the abnormal inflorescence as a more or less persistent juvenile 

 condition of the normal one. Subsequent investigation opposes this 

 view, as it has shown that the plant is frequent in the Taunton 

 district, that all its inflorescences have the peculiar characters 

 mentioned above, and that it preserves them throughout the flower- 

 ing season. This year I placed some of the plants in the garden 

 away from other plantains, and I hope to obtain seedlings next 

 year. In my notes, where I have provisionally placed the plant 

 as var. antlioviride, the earliest times of flowering noticed were 

 rather later than for the type, being 25th May, 1919, 13th May, 

 1920, and 14th April, 1921, as compared with 1st May, 5th April, 

 and 24th March. It is hoped that subsequent examination and 

 experiments of 1922 will enable the status of the plant to be deter- 

 mined. — W. Watson. 



Cuscuta europ^a L. in Mid-Cheshire. During the present 

 summer there has been an extensive growth of the Great Dodder 

 in a potato-field bordering the River Weaver at Acton Bridge, 

 three miles from Northwich. The farmer noticed a yellow patch 

 in the field in July, and found at this spot that the growths of 

 the potatoes were covered over and matted together by the twining 

 tendril-like stems of the parasite. The patch was seven yards 

 in length and comprised several drills across. There were other 

 but smaller patches in other parts of the field. He cannot account 

 for the occurrence, as no seed has been introduced on the farm which 

 could explain it. The potatoes came from Dumfries last year, and 

 oats which were grown on the same field the previous year also came 

 from Scotland. — W. Horton-Smith. 



Orchis hircina in Gloucestershire. This orchis has this 

 year been found again in E. Gloucestershire. It was a single spike 

 at the edge of a wood on the Cotteswolds, among the older woods 

 where the Red Helleborine flourishes, in the same general neighbour- 

 hood as the specimen found in 1917. — H. J. Riddelsdell. 



