SHORT NOTES 335 



Calcutta, 54 specimens of Sikkim plants ; Dr. E. Schlechter, 61 

 specimens of orchids from Sumatra; the Imperial Botanic Gardens, 

 St. Petersburg, 930 phanerogams and 36 cryptogams from Man- 

 churia and Korea, collected by Komarov. 

 (To be concluded.) 



SHORT NOTES. 



Eynchospora fusca (p. 295). — I gathered a few specimens on 

 Burtle Moor, near Shapwick Eailway Station, Somerset, as late as 

 July, 1888, just over a century after Sole recorded it. This was 

 several years before the Thos. Clark Herbarium came into my 

 possession, and disclosed finer specimens from the same district. 

 My find was recorded, with other plants, in Journ. Bot. 1889, p. 183. 

 It was quoted in Murray's Flora of Somerset, and Mr. White's Flora 

 of Bristol (1912), but apparently the plant disappeared very soon 

 after 1888, probably owing to the cutting of the peat, for no one 

 has since seen it. It is somewhat strange that B. fusca does not 

 increase more, on account of its elongated rootstock or above- 

 ground creeping stolons. This is one of the chief points of dis- 

 tinction from the commoner B. alba, which has no stolons. Some 

 of the wet, sandy heaths in Dorset, adorned in August with Bog 

 Asphodel and Marsh Gentian, might very possibly reveal this 

 rare species growing with the other, which is common there. 

 Clark recorded the two growing together in Somerset, and so did 

 Arcangeli in Italy. In his Flora Italiana, ed. 2 (1894), p. 77, he 

 says : " Con la precedente [B. alba] , ma piu scarsa." B. alba is 

 given as " non frequente " in Northern and Central Italy. Not 

 only are the habitats of the only two European species of Eyncho- 

 spora very similar — so similar that they sometimes grow together 

 — but, excepting the British Isles, the known distribution of both 

 species throughout the world seems to bear a remarkable analogy. 

 As far as I have been able to gather, however, B. fusca is much 

 rarer in nearly all the European countries where they both occur. 

 — H. Stuart Thompson. 



The county of Dorset was accidentally omitted from my 



notes on this species : "Originally gathered near the Isle of Purbeck, 

 Dorsetshire, by the Eev. Mr. Lightfoot, according to a specimen 

 in the herbarium of the Eev. Mr. Hasted at Bury. Mr. John 

 Denson." Smith, English Flora, i. p. 290 (1828). The species is 

 not infrequent in four of the botanical divisions of the county 

 (Mansel-Pleydell, Fl. Dorset, p. 290 (1895) ).— Arthur Bennett. 



Isle of Wight Plants (p. 286). — With reference to the 

 remarks on Fumaria, it may be well to point out that the number 

 of species described in Fumaria in Britain is not thirty-six, as 

 Mr. Stratton states, but ten, of which one only is new. Mr. 

 Stratton's number, taken from my index, is the total of the 

 British species with all their subdivisions and hybrids ; and as, by a 

 curious coincidence, the corresponding number of Fumaria names 

 in Eouy & Foucaud's Flore de France, v. i. (1893), is likewise thirty- 



