ON EUMEX MAXIMUS. 



ON RUMEX MAXIMUS, ScJm 

 Er THE Hon. J. L. Warren. 



It appears strange that the collecting season of 1874 should have 

 elapsed without adding any new and uncontested stations for this 

 water-dock. The writer of the present note quite expected that, 

 after Dr. Trimen's article and plate had appeared in our last 

 February number, the comital census for Rumex maximus would have 

 run itself up very rapidly. '1 his does not seem yet to have been the 

 case ; so it may be perhaps worth giving some few additional obser- 

 vations made this autumn at Lewes on the dock in situ. I revisited the 

 station specially to study in growing plants the characters by which 

 the root-leaves and mature perianth diverge from Hydrolapathum. 

 Inasmuch as the differences between the perianths in each duck are 

 soonest dismissed, let these be first considered. And, by way of pre- 

 lude, let us here enunciate what ought to be the golden rule 

 of all dock-hunters Never figure or base your description in Rumex 

 upon any perianth which does not contain a fully matured nut. Be- 

 ware, moreover, of deaf nuts, which seem ripe at first, but whose 

 shrunk and imperfectly fiiled-out sides plainly indicate imperfect 

 fructification. Had this simple rule been more adhered to in the past, 

 the genus Rumex would not have fallen into the unjust obloquy and 

 neglect in which it is at present held by the average field-botanist. To 

 resume — A panicle of maximus laid on paper side by side of a panicle 

 of Hydrolapathum, will be found to have, on an average, the upper 

 sides of its mature inner peiianth leaves much more decidedly denti- 

 culate than is the case on the panicle of its congener. But the whole 

 difference is one of average and degree, not of speciHc or organic divergence. 

 And a captious observer might easily point out in our two specimens 

 which are supposed to lie one by the other, that the, say, dozen most 

 denticulate perianths on the Hydrolapathum example, are more 

 maximus-\\Ve than the, say, dozen least denticulate perianths on the 

 maximus panicle. I purposely exclude those which embrace abortive 

 nuts, of course, in each case. But even when this is said, I ara still 

 free to insist, that neither in field or herbarium have I yet seen any- 

 thing in the water-dock superspecies, which can match the decided, 

 almost ^r«^^ws/«-like teeth on the most extreme perianths of the Lewes 

 specimens. But before we pass to other portions of these docks, it may 

 not be a useless reminder to the collector, that nearly all ripe Hydro- 

 lapathum perianths are slightly denticulate in their upper portions, 

 and that their descrii)tion in the Manual (Ed. 7) as " nearly entire," 

 ought perhaps to be rather modified 



With regard next to the root-leaves. The writer feels inclined to 

 maintain, that these when young, both in maximus and in Hydrola- 

 pathum, have attenuated bases, but that the root-leaves of maximus 

 develope a cordate or sub- cordate base as they grow older, while those 

 of Hydrolapathum never under any circumstances or at any age be- 

 come fairly even sub-cordate. I do not hereby assert that before they 

 wither, all the root-leaves of a plant of maximus must develope dilated 



