66 



THE NATURALIST. 



Notes on a few Buckinghamshire 



Earities, — May, 1804. 



By James Britten. 



At the end of last month I was 

 staying for a few days in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Little Marlow, Bucks, 

 and as the botany of this locality 

 appears never to have been fully 

 investigated, I venture to offer the 

 following notes of my principal dis- 

 coveries there to the readers of the 

 ' Naturalist.' 



Little Marlow is a picturesque 



village, situate near the Thames, 



which in this vicinity quite comes 



up to the poet's description, 



*' Though deep, yet clear ; 

 Though gentle, yet not dull." 



this is certainly more than my Lon- 

 don readers can say in its favour by 

 the time that it arrives in their 

 neighbourhood. It may seem rather 

 an anachronism when I state that, 

 although this paper is entitled 

 *' Notes on a few Buckinghamshire 

 rarities," the locality to which I 

 would first draw attention is in Berk- 

 shire ; yet such is the case. In a 

 marshy meadow not very far from 

 Cookham, and by the side of the 

 railway, I was delighted to find a 

 perfect miniature foi'est oiPedicularis 

 palustris. This plant, which, by the 

 way, is one of the handsomest owned 

 by our flora, is generally recorded 

 as common. It appears, from the 

 * Cybele Britannica,' to be as widely 

 distributed as P. sylvatica ; and yet, 



as compared with this latter, it is 

 rare. I myself had never previously 

 met with it, though my botanical 

 rambles had extended over consider- 

 able portions of at least six counties, 

 (to say nothing of occasional ex- 

 cursions into many more.) A friend, 

 by whom I was directed to this spot, 

 informed me that she had never be- 

 fore seen it, and this after studying 

 British Botany for at least thirty 

 years. The leaves are dark brown 

 in colour, so dark, indeed, as almost 

 to remind one of the Perilla Nankin- 

 ensis now so fashionable as a foliage 

 border plant. Growing with the 

 Pedicularis, and in still greater 

 abundance, was Siellaria glauca, 

 which certainly well deserves its 

 specific name. Saxifraga granulata, 

 occurred on a neighbouring bank, 

 but was of course in a somewhat 

 advanced state. At the further end 

 of the meadow, on a bank, was a 

 patch of the Star of Bethlehem 

 ( Ornithogalum umhellatam), its beau- 

 tiful white starjy blossoms expand- 

 ing fully in the sunshine. This is 

 one of the " unfortunates " branded 

 as " alien " by the inexorable * Cy- 

 bele ;' how it could possibly have 

 been introduced to this locality, I 

 cannot imagine. It was confined to 

 a very small piece of ground, so I 

 took but a few specimens ; and it was 

 fortunate that I did, as on revisiting 

 the spot a few days after, nearly all 

 the blossoms had been wantonly 



