19G THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Britain as a whole, I believe this species is more often seen on sandy 

 or red gravelly soil than on limestone, but evidently it likes the close 

 turf though sometimes sandy soil of the rides in woods on limestone. 



On the Continent, e.g. in Switzerland and the Jura, it appears that 

 this plant is sometimes found in damper and more cultivated places 

 e. q. in arable ground. Two modern authors mention " Fields after 

 the crops, clearings in woods " ; and another botanist speaks of 

 " Damp fields, clay soils, cultivated and cleared, clearings in woods, 

 unequally spread" (Grodet, Flore du Jura, an excellent work). 



In conclusion, it seems that a plant one has usually associated 

 with dry hill-sides, sandy commons, and open woods, or road-sides 

 near them, may have its erratic and sparse distribution markedly 

 effected by the agency of man ; and JBentham's habitats probably 

 referred to the plant throughout its known geographical range, and 

 not only to that in the British Isles. Such, indeed, was apparently 

 the case in regard to all the plants in the HandhoGh, a point 

 worth drawing attention to, and not hitherto properly appreciated 

 by myself. 



SHORT NOTES. 



Female Flowers iiy Plaistago lanceolata. Some interest- 

 ing observations have been made this spring on plants growing wild 

 in Kew Oardens, and the following seem worth recording : — Plants 

 of Plantago lanceolata are common in the grounds round the Her- 

 barium ; and amongst grass which has not j^et (Maj- 28) been cut, 

 several have been observed with the stamens in all the flowers reduced 

 in size, the filaments very short, and the anthers producing no fertile 

 pollen. All the spikes on each plant have their flowers in a similar 

 state of functional unisexuality through reduction of the stamens. 

 The flowers, like those of a normal Plantago, are protogynous, the 

 styles and stigmas of the lower flowers being the first to appear. 

 When these have become brown and shrivelled the j^ello wish- green 

 (not cream-coloured or very pale yellow) sterile anthers appear, but 

 since they have extremely short filaments the stamens are not nearly 

 so conspicuous as in normal spikes. The ovaries are fully fonned and 

 the ovules are developing into seeds. Growing near the abnormal 

 plants, and subjected to the same external conditions, are some with 

 quite normal flowers and inflorescences. The abnormal unisexual 

 state must be due to inherent causes affecting the entire plant indepen- 

 dently of external conditions, and may be compared with the reduc- 

 tion of the stamens in the small-flowared form of Glechoma hederacea. 

 In the Botanical Bulletin (afterwards the Botanical Gazette), i. 

 45 (1876), is recorded a plant of P. lanceolata which had flowers 

 without a trace of stamens or anthers. The styles and stigmas 

 developed normally at first, but '* soon began to bend down so that 

 the stigma entered the tube of the corolla and soon the whole style 

 was coiled up in the corolla tube, remaining there for a day or more 

 in some instances, when it resumed its erect position." Nothing like 

 this has been observed in the Kew specimens, in which the styles 

 drop off when the seeds^are partly formed. — W. B. Turrill. 



