SHORT NOTES. 275 



SHOET NOTES. 



PoLTPoeoN MONSPELTENSis IN DoESET. — Mr. Mansel-Pleydoll sends 

 specimens of this addition to the county flora from a locality very 

 rich in rarities, the shores of the "Little Sea" on the west of Poole 

 Harbour. It occurs there in great abundance, its extension being at 

 least half a mile. 



EcTRTANGiUM SuMBUL, Kauffmcmn. — This TJmbellifer, which yields 

 the musk-root or Sumbul-root of pharmacy, has flowered this year for 

 the first time in England at Kew. The root was sent from Russia in a dry 

 and dormant state, and has produced foliage each year, but no flower 

 ing stem till the present one. This latter is leafless, slender, and 

 over eight feet high, with about a dozen spreading branches in the 

 upper half, each bearing seven or eight umbels. The plant has much 

 the general habit of some Eerulas : it is well figured in the original 

 memoir in the " Kouv. Memoires " of the Moscow Society of Naturalists 

 (vol. xii., 1871, tab. 24, 25), where the genus is founded. The name 

 is taken from the great width of the dorsal vittse ; in the ovary and 

 half-ripe fruit which 1 have had an opportunity of examining, these 

 occupy by far the greater part of the transverse section, are inflated 

 and quadrangular, divided by thin but strong partitions, and filled 

 with a strongly musk-scented liquid secretion ; the two commissural 

 vittse of each mericarp are smaller, and contain a solid secretion. 

 The disk is very large and thick, with eight undulated incurved lobes. 

 The ripe fruit, as figured by Kauffmann, is much dorsally compressed, 

 with the wide vittae occupying the whole width of the furrows, and 

 the marginal primary ribs slightly prominent and thickened as in 

 most Ferulas and Peucedanums. The Kew specimen has not ripened 

 its seeds, and the plant dies after flowering, so that there is now no 

 opportunity of verifying these fruit-characters. The structure 

 of the ovary, however, seems sufficiently remarkable to give a 

 generic status to the plant in an Order where genera are so artificial 

 as in Vmbelliferce. All that is known of the history of the drug 

 will be found at p. 278 of Fliickiger and Hanbury's '* Pharmaco- 

 graphia." — Heney Trimen. 



Plants on Site of the Exhibition of 1862, South Ken- 

 sington. —There has been a considerable diminution in the area of this 

 piece of ground by the erection in its centre of the new Natural 

 History Museum. On July 28th Mr. Warren and I went over the 

 remaining weed-covered portion, with a view to see the changes in its 

 vegetation. Many of the plants enumerated in the list printed in 

 this Journal for 1872 (pp. 248-9) have disappeared, and the flora 

 has become more nearly that of ordinary waste ground in the west 

 of London ; still there is a fair sprinkling remaining, besides some 

 new ones. Artemisia scoparia is still represented by a good many 

 small plants, and Reseda sujfruticosa was sparingly seen ; the prevalent 

 plant this year is Chenopodium Jicifolium, of which hundreds of tall 

 handsome specimens are to be found. Thlaspi arvense, Oxalis stricta, 



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