40 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
Alchemilla vulgaris, Linn., and allied Forms. 
By P. Ewine. 
[Read 27th February, 1894.] 
A very able paper on this plant and its forms, by Mr. G. C. 
Druce, M.A., F.L.S., appeared in the Annals of Scottish Natural 
History for January, 1894. I may remark that the origin of the 
paper is Austro-Hungarian, translated by A. Kerner, and com- 
municated to the above magazine by Mr. Druce. 
The paper has given rise to some interesting discussion, in 
which various botanists have taken part; and the first point 
referred to was the much-disputed one as to the effects of cultiva- 
tion on A. alpina in converting it into the form known as A. 
conjuncta. It is very doubtful whether such a change really 
takes place. The first instance ever brought under my notice was 
reported to me one day on Ben Lawers by the late Professor J. H. 
Balfour, who stated that a plant of A. alpina, taken from that 
mountain and grown in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, had, 
after a few years’ cultivation, assumed the form known as 
conjuncta. I according took home a plant of A. alpina for 
garden cultivation. It has grown luxuriantly, and spread over 
a rockery, but after twenty-three years’ culture it still remains 
A. alpina, and shows no deviation from the typical form. At 
Uddingston, for eight years, I have grown A. alpina and 
A. vulgaris side by side, and often intermixed with each other, 
in the hope of getting A. conjwncta by cross-fertilisation ; but 
although I get many seedlings of A. vulgaris, there are none of 
A. alpina, and none approaching A. conjuncta. 
Although this experiment seems very conclusive, I have so 
often heard of this plant changing under cultivation that I am 
not perfectly convinced that it may not sometimes do so under 
certain conditions. I have here before me a specimen of 4. 
conjuncta, said to have been taken from Ben Lawers many years 
ago by Provost Smith, Kinghorn, as a souvenir of his first visit to 
a 
