SHORT NOTES. 295 



are longer and more lanceolate, narrowed, not at all cordate at the 

 base. The enlarged petals and tubercles are considerably larger. 

 Since I first found this Dock I have been on the look-out for forms 

 intermediate between it and other of our species, but have not hither- 

 to met with anything to warrant me in disputing its claim to the 

 rank of a species given to it in, I believe, most of the Continental 

 Floras. I have secured a number of specimens for the Bot. Ex. 

 Club. — T. R. Aecher Beiggs. 



The Growth oe the two Sea Couch-Grasses. — During the present 

 month while studying Tritica at Littlehampton, by tracing out T. 

 acutum from the shifting sand-dunes inland, and by similarly follow- 

 ing T. pimgens from the harder glareal coast-zone outwards towards 

 the tide-mark, I was able to find a space of about two roods closely 

 occupied by both of these grasses growing intermixed. Their con- 

 trasted growth was extremely curious. The stalks of T. 2)u?igens rose 

 perfectly upright ; those of T. acutum grew at all inclinations to the soil 

 of half a right angle and less. I can only compare the sight to a pine- 

 plantation recently visited by a severe gale, in which the upright and 

 uninjured trees represented the Triticum pungens, the wholly pros- 

 trate and half blown-over ones T. acutum."^ I also found ordinary 

 T. repejis near the same spot, growing on the hard littoral flat, sur- 

 rounded by ordinary T. pungens, yet not the least altered from its usual 

 appearance inland. It is suggested in M. Duval-Jouve's paper that 

 such unmetamorphosed individuals of T. repens are "new-comers" 

 on the shore, and that subsequent generations will thicken, I presume, 



their leaves, and lengthen their spikes until they turn into but 



here I am at fault. Would coast colonization turn T. repens into the 

 pungent Couch-grass, or into the acute one ? In leafage it is certainly 

 nearest akin to the latter ; in spike it seems more allied to the last, 

 especially to that one of T. pungens which I have ventured to name 

 mucronatum ; starved specimens of which are, except for their leaf- 

 age, to my eyes in spike undistinguishable from that very usual sub- 

 aristate state of T. repens. As regards the leaf -likeness between this 

 last and T. acutum, I think it is most conspicuous in the barren stems of 

 that large broad lax -leaved variety of T. acutum which, I believe, 

 should be called T. megalostachjs according to foreign botanists. It is 

 worth noting that the young leaves of T. repens are involute at first, 

 and afterwards become perfectly flattened, which those of its coast 

 congeners do not. Also that while the leaf tip of T. pungens sharpens 

 and discolours with age (whence of course the name), in T. repens the dis- 

 coloration also takes place, but is more diffused, spreads further down 

 the lamina, and does not produce any marked additional rigidity in its 

 texture. — J. L. Warren. 



Gentiana Pneumonanthe in Bucks. — This Gentian has been 

 collected during the autumn by a lady (Miss Williams) on a hill not 

 far from Wendover, Bucks. It is not given for that county in ** Topo- 

 graphical Botany." 



* T. pmigens is often more or less geniculate at its stem -base, but after that 

 perfectly upright. 



