ON SENECIO SPATHUL^POLIUS, DC, AS A BRITISH PLANT. 35 



linear, with enlarged clasping bases. The leaves are all more or 

 less woolly on both sides, The stem is woolly in one of my 

 specimens (25 in. high), which bears as many as twenty stem-leaves; 

 another very much smaller specimen (15 in. high) has ten stem- 

 leaves. The foreign specimens vary in size in the same manner, 

 some of them being even of greater height ; they have also similar 

 leaves, except that in most cases the lowest leaves are wanting, the 

 primary always ; and those few of those leaves that remain are 

 lengthened out similarly to those of our plant, probably by the 

 dense herbage amongst which they seem to have grown. I have 

 not found any essential difference in the heads or florets ; for the 

 colouring of the tips of the phyllaries does not seem constant, 

 neither does the quantity of wool upon them ; but the phyllaries 

 of S. campestris are much more commonly glabrous, except quite at 

 their base, whilst those of S. spathula;folius are nearly always woolly, 

 except at their more or less coloured tips. Garcke distinguishes 

 the plant by the shape of the early leaves, as I have done ; he 

 describes those of S. spathulcBfolius as ovate, with a subtruncate base, 

 the following being longish-ovate, with broadly- winged cuneate 

 petioles ; of S. campestris as ovate or roundish, with a cuneate 

 petiole, the following being oblong and not narrowed below. 



When visiting Mr. Backhouse's private garden at York, in 

 September last, he asked me to name a plant which he had brought 

 from high situations having a northern exposure, a few miles from 

 Mickle Fell, in N.W. Yorkshu-e, where he had found it abundantly ; 

 his growing plants exactly resembled those in our Botanic Garden 

 derived from Holyhead, and I had no hesitation in naming them 

 S. SpathulcBfolius before he told me from whence he had obtained 

 them. This is a most interesting discovery of my acute and 

 observant friend, who has detected so many interesting plants in 

 that wild and elevated region ; he remarked especially that the 

 plant was not to be found, except with a northern exposure ; 

 extending to the top of a ridge on that side, but not spreading over 

 it to the southern slope in a single instance. The locality in Wales 

 to which I was taken by Mr. Griffith is on a cliff about 40-50 feet 

 above the sea, and having, I believe, a north or north-west 

 exposure. Seedlings which I brought from there in 1880 have not 

 flowered in 1881, and retain their beautiful primary leaves, which 

 are only now dymg slowly away. 



I was much pleased to find the same plant bearing the name of 

 ^S*. spathulmjolius flowering in our garden in 1881 ; the curator 

 received it from Mr. Max Leichtliu, of Baden-Baden, with that 

 name. This confirmation of the name which I had given to our 

 plant was most satisfactory. 



Mr. Backhouse considers his Yorkshire plant as alxDine, and the 

 Welsh a maritime form of it, and both different from S. spathulcBfolius, 

 but I cannot agree with him. 



Mr. Griffith believes that his plant is biennial, for such he finds 

 it to be in his garden ; he says that it flowers in the second year, 

 and then dies down completely. Certainly the continental plant is 

 perennial. The German plant in our garden has flowered this 



