84 GNAPHALIUM ULIGINOSUM L., VAE. PILULAEE WAHL. 



it bore to specimens recently distributed by the Exchange Club as 

 G. pilulare Wahl. ; on gathering it, my first impression was fully 

 confirmed by the examination of the seeds, which were well marked 

 by numerous "hair-like papillae." Stimulated by this discovery of 

 a new locality for a plant only once previously recorded as an 

 inhabitant of Cambridgeshire, I carefully searched the ground for 

 additional specimens, but although hundreds of plants presented 

 the same external facies and dwarf habit of growth, I only succeeded 

 in finding two or three examples with the typical achenes that mark 

 G. pilulare. 



One of these I sent to my friend Mr. Bennett, who amply 

 confirmed my identification, saying : — ** The Gnaphalium is exactly 

 G. pilulare Wahl. — I have compared it with his plate in his Fl. 

 Lapponica, and the hahit and fruit of your specimen are so alike 

 that I cannot put a ? to it." Being now fully satisfied as to the 

 name of my plant, the next step was to ascertain, as far as possible, 

 its relationship to tlie typical G. ulif/inosum, and its predial rank in 

 the fens ; and here I may say that I regarded the form as specifically 

 distinct from G. uliginosum, and as a corn-field casual introduced 

 with the grass- seed with which it grew. 



A very slight examination of the locality clearly proved that 

 G. pilulare had not been sown either with the wheat or the grass, 

 (as it never occurred in the drill-rows, and but very rarely in the 

 square interspaces between the rows ; so rarely, indeed, that a 

 lengthened search only produced three or four additional specimens), 

 so that the plant, if introduced, was evidently established to some 

 degree, and had descended from parent-plants which grew and 

 seeded on the ground where it occurred. In the hope of getting 

 additional evidence that might bear on this point, I examined the 

 surrounding fields, in all of which G. uliginosum grew abundantly, 

 and although many plants had exactly the facies of G. pilulare, 

 none had the peculiar achenes. This showed that the plant could 

 not rank as a colonist, but probably was a "casual" of recent 

 introduction, so recent that it had not time to become carried 

 beyond the field in which it was first accidentally sown with some 

 preceding crop. 



Here the question might have rested, had it not been for the 

 remarkable distribution of G. uliginosum throughout the stubble in 

 which G. pilulare grew. The former plant did not grow all over 

 the wheat-stubble alike, but in little patches, evidently the result of 

 some single plant having here and there escaped the weeding of 

 the crop which occupied the field in the preceding year, and so 

 had been enabled to ripen its seeds and scatter them for a short 

 distance around. But then I remembered that in no single instance 

 had I found G. pilulare away from one of these patches, nor had I 

 found more than one plant in a patch — with perhaps a single 

 exception. How was it, then, that the one form could produce 

 dozens of plants in a patch, and the other only one ? The conclusion 

 seemed to me inevitable that both forms sprang from one individual 

 seed-plant in each patch, and that G. pilulare is not even a variety, 

 but only a state of G. uliginosum, incapable of reproducing its 



