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SPERGULARIA ATHENIENSIS Aschebson IN ENGLAND. 

 By G. Claeidge Deuce, M.A., F.L.S. 



The history of this as a British plant is as follows: — In June, 

 1906, I found growing in mobile sand, on the foreshore near the 

 railway between the Grand Hotel and the first tower, St. Helier's, 

 Jersey, specimens of a Spergularia, which on my return home I 

 identified as the above (see Eep. Bot. Exch. Club, 1906, 196 (1907), 

 and Journ. Bot. 1907, 401). In the Jersey habitat, as several 

 aliens occurred, a native status could scarcely be claimed for this 

 Mediterranean species. I visited Jersey again in 1907 and 1910, 

 but on each occasion too early in the year, and found to my dis- 

 appointment that so many changes had taken place on the fore- 

 shore, that few of the plants that I had seen there remained, and 

 no further specimens of the Spergularia were obtainable. In 1911 

 I visited Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, in order to search for a Cerastium, 

 and gathered a quantity of Spergularias there, among which I have 

 since detected S. atheniensis. This gives it a distinct status as a 

 British plant, and its occurrence there is another instance of the 

 extension of a Mediterranean plant spreading up the shores of 

 Spain, Portugal, and Western France, and eventually reaching 

 the eastern coast of England. In 1912 Dr. Vigurs collected some 

 Spergularias at Par, Cornwall, one of which I discovered to be 

 S. atJieniensis ; but Par is so full of aliens that we cannot claim 

 the plant as a true native there until it is found in other places on 

 the southern coast. In 1912 Mr. W. C. Barton was in Guernsey, 

 and collected many Spergularias ; among these are typical speci- 

 mens from L'Eree on the northern coast, and others from Cobo 

 less well-marked, but near the specimens distributed as atheniensis 

 in the Flora Italica Critica, n. 792 and 792 bis. 



The name dates from 1867, when it was published with 

 synonymy by Ascherson in Schweiufurth's Beitrag zur Flora 

 jEtliiopiens, p. 305 (the name occurs earlier in the book (p. 267) 

 but is there a nomen nudum). The following descriptions by 

 Willkomiri k Lange (as S. campestris) and by Eouy & Foucaud 

 practically cover our plants, which in appearance resemble salina 

 forms, but differ in their more repeatedly branching and denser 

 cymes, small capsules and aphyllous inflorescences. The seeds 

 are small, 0'5 mm. or less, somewhat pear-shaped, slightly com- 

 pressed, papillate, but never winged ; they resemble those of 

 rupestris, but the capsules are smaller, the petals are shorter than 

 the small calyx : the plant is in Britain apparently only of annual 

 or biennial duration. The broadly triangular dull-coloured stipules, 

 the lighter-coloured and papillate seeds, and absence of central 

 rosette distinguish it from S. rubra. 



"Annua, glanduloso-puberula, viscida, basi glabra, caulibus 

 numerosis in orbem expansis prostratis vel adscendentibus, dicho- 

 tome ramosis, 4-9 " 1. ; foliis linearibus planiusculis mucronato- 

 acuminatis, internodia plerumque elongata non aequantibus, stipulis 

 brevibus ovatis acutis, basi connatis, sordide albis non micantibus; 



