33 



(©vtgtual Articles- 



ON SENECIO SPATHULjEFOLIUS, DC, AS A BRITISH 



PLANT. 



By C. C. Babington, M.A., F.R.S., &c. 



(Tab. 226.) 



As in the 8th edition of my ' Manual ' I have ventured to 

 identify the Cineraria integrifulia l3. of Smith's 'Flora Britannica ' 

 (ii. 895) and the C. maritima integrij'olia of Davies [' Welsh Bota- 

 nology,' 79 (1813)]," with Senecio spathulo'folms oiI)eQ>Qjidio\\Q, it 

 may be well to state my reasons for doing so. But first I may 

 remark that the j)lant seems to have remained almost unknown 

 from the time of Davies until it was recently again found by 

 Mr. J. E. Grifath, F.L.S., of Bangor; except that the late Mr. 

 "W.Wilson, of Warrington, gathered it in " Holyhead Island " in 

 July, 1824 ; but he does not ap^oear to have made any special 

 remarks upon it, as he did upon eo many British plants (see 

 his papers in Hooker's 'Botanical Miscellany' and 'Journal of 

 Botany'). In the year 1832 I supposed that I had obtained 

 evidence that the C. campestris of our chalk-hills did, in a very wet 

 season, sometimes become the var. alpina of Smith (see Loudon's 

 'Mag. Nat. Hist.,' v., 88); but I had not then, nor for long 

 after, seen a specimen of Davies's plant. Smith expressed (' Eng. 

 Flora,' iii. 446) much inclination to consider it a distinct species. 

 If he had only seen rather imperfect specimens collected by 

 Wilson, like that now before me, we cannot wonder at his 

 hesitation in doing so. As soon as I found a specimen from 

 Wilson in our Cambridge Herbarium, doubts of the identity of the 

 plant from Holyhead and that of the chalk-hills arose in my mind. 

 The difference between the comparatively gigantic specimens of C. 

 camjjestris (more than 1| ft. high) gathered here in the very w^et season 

 of 1829, which are in my herbarium, and one of which is figured in 

 Loudon's 'Magazine' (L c, fig. /3.), and that from Holyhead 



* [It may be useful to append Davies's account of the plant. He says, 

 ••It grows on declivities above the sea, at Porth-y-pistill, and Forth -y-felin, 

 near Holyhead. There is something singular in the particular attachment 

 of this plant to its maritime situation; although it must for ages have 

 annually ripened its seed, on the south-west side of this country, from which 

 point the wind blows above three-fourths of the year, and must consequently convey 

 the downy seed plentifully into the country, yet we never see a plant of it at any 

 distance from its favourite ground, though there is a good deal of uncultivated 

 land near, where it might be propagated without interruption. The common 

 size of the plant is from one to two feet ; it sometimes exceeds even that." A 

 specimen from Davies is in the National Herbarium at South Kensington. — 

 Ed. Joukn. Bgt.] 



N. s. VOL. 11. [February, 1882.] f 



