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ALIENS FEOM TURKISH BARLEY. 

 By S. T. Dunn, B.A., F.L.S. 



For some years past I have been puzzled to account for the 

 frequent occurrence of certain alien plants, such as Medicngo 

 sGUtellata and Melilotas parviftora, in the neighbourhood of Bath, 

 but recently the problem has been, at any rate partially, solved 

 by the discovery of these and many other introductions associated 

 together under circumstances that left no doubt about their origin. 

 The colony was growing in an old quarry at Twerton, a mile or two 

 from Bath, to which my attention had been drawn earlier in the 

 year by a quantity of Lepidinm Draba. On returning there iu 

 September I found about a hundred species evidently introduced 

 and extending in patches over about two acres of the flat grassy 

 floor of the disused part of the quarry. Some of the patches ap- 

 peared to be quite new, others must have lasted two or three years, 

 while one, consisting almost wholly of leguminous plants growing 

 freely in the native turf, must have been older still. Out of all the 

 species seen, most were fruiting well, and only a few in the newest 

 patches were evidently unable to ripen seed. Some of those first 

 determined pointed to an eastern origin, and I was not surprised 

 to find, after considerable enquiry, that a certain maltster was 

 in the habit of carting his barley-siftings out to Twerton Quarry, 

 and also that he had since 1890 been using barley from Asiatic 

 Turkey. 



Several facts point to our Turkish barley trade as likely to be 

 responsible for a large number of alien plants in Britain. In the 

 first place, an immense quantity of this cereal is shipped to England 

 and Scotland from ports of Asia Minor and the Levant: the average 

 for the last five years has been over 3,000,000 cwt. annually. Owing, 

 moreover, to the careless growing and thrashing of the crops, there 

 is an unusual amount of seeds of cornfield weeds with the grain ; 

 in two handfuls from Ouchak I have seen as many as twenty or 

 thirty. All these have to be sifted out before malting, and they are 

 subsequently thrown away upon waste ground or sold for feeding 

 chickens, &c. The first way of disposing of them would account 

 for such colonies as those at Wandsworth (see Brewer's Flora of 

 Surrey, pp. 313-318 (1863) ) and at Twerton, while from the latter 

 would result the records of single aliens scattered on commons and 

 by roadsides. 



Below is appended a list of all such of the Twerton aliens as 

 could be identified from material collected in September, including 

 also native species where these have undoubtedly come with the 

 sittings . Most have been compared with authentic specimens in 

 the British Museum Herbarium. The list will be found to correspond 

 to some extent with Wandsworth aliens, which indeed probably came 

 from the same quarter, for they were mostly Mediterranean species, 

 and Asiatic Turkey was, of all Mediterranean countries, the largest 

 exporter of Barley to England at the time the list was compiled. 



