LINXEA>' SOCIETY OF LOXDOX. 77 



spikelets to the base, whereas in alha and its varieties they are 

 bare of spikelets. 



Last July, when in the company of Mr. E. D. Marquand, I saw 

 •growing plentifully in the excavated soil near the Vale Castle in 

 (guernsey a grass which was different from any British form 

 known to me, and subsequently found it covering an extensive 

 area and in considerable quantity, not only in such situations, 

 but also by the sides of roads and other dry bare places in the 

 northern portion of Guernsey and also extending westwards to 

 the Grande Mare, where it grew by the roadside. On my visit to 

 Alderiiey I found it' growing on made soil in Braye Bay and on 

 quarry debris farther east. I have also detected a small piece 

 among some grasses gathered at St. Luke's, Jersey, in the pre- 

 vious June, but this was on some I'ecently disturbed ground, 

 where alien plants were present. In Corbiere's ' Xouvelle Tlore 

 de Normandie' he reports it as a southern species naturalized for 

 upwards of 40 years at Cherbourg, espec-ially about the ditches of 

 the western port. From the fact of its not being a native of 

 Western Erance, it may be held to be also adventitious in the 

 Channel Islands, and in a country so disturbed by the operations 

 of man as these small islands, it must be very ditlicult to decide. 

 On the one hand, there are the facts of its absence from the 

 opposite coast of France as a native species, and that no botanist 

 has hitherto recorded it from the islands, while the geographical 

 range is not strongly in favour of its being native in the Channel 

 Islands ; yet, on the other hand, it may be urged that it extends 

 up the western coast as 7ar as Spain and Portugal, that it is 

 extremely similar to A. alha var. stolonifera in appearance and 

 chooses the same situations, and may thus have escaped observa- 

 tion, while in its undoubtedlv native area it prefers ground which 

 has been disturbed by man, and that it is now at any rate abundant 

 and widely spread ; moreover, the recent discovery of Sperfjidaria 

 atheniensis in Jersey (a distinctly Mediterranean species) supports 

 the possibility of its being native. 



Curiously it represents A. stolonifera in the Li nnean Herbarium, 

 and for that reason Eichter in the ' Plautse Europoeae ' puts it 

 under that name. But as Linnaeus bases his stolonifera on the 

 plant described in the ' Flora Suecica,' ii. p. 66 and i. n. 61, it 

 evidently cannot refer to this Mediterranean species. Indeed, 

 some authors have thought it refers to A. vulgaris. With. ; but 

 since this plant represents A. stolonifera in his herbarium it would 

 apj)ear more probable that the well-known form of A. alha, which 

 mimics this plant so closely, is really the Linnean stolonifera. 



Alsii^'e atheniensis, nohis, in Jersey. 



Spergularia atheniensis, Ascherson ex Schweinfurth, Beitr. Fl. 

 ^Ethiop. p. 267 (1867), nomen tantum ; JSyman, Consp. 

 p. 123 ; Halacsy, Consp. Fl. Graec. i. p. 25 L — /S'. 7'uhra var. 

 atheniensis, Heldr. & Sart. in Heldr. Herb. Graec. Xorm, 



