40 ENGLISH BOTANY, 



and more of them are expanded at one time, so that it is decidedly 

 the handsomest of the British Polj^galse. This plant has not the 

 bitter taste of the following species, with which it appears to have 

 little in common. 



Chalk Il'dlcwort. 



German, Kalk-KreuMume. 



SPECIES III— P OLYGALA AUSTRIACA. Crantz. 



Plate CLXXXIX. 



Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ, et Helv. Vol. XVIII. Tab. JMCCCXLVIII. Fig. 182. 

 P. uligiuosa, Utich. " oliui." Fries, Sum. Veg. Scand. p. 32. 



Rootstock simple or slightly branched, producing close to the 

 crown a rosette of large obovate leaves, from which one or more 

 erect flowering shoots arise, having the leaves abruptly becoming 

 smaller and narrower than those of the rosette. Calyx wings 

 elliptical, much narrower and a little shorter than the fruit, with 

 all the three nerves very prominent and nearly simple, never anasto- 

 mosing. " Helmet of the stigma acute, serrulated " (Heich.). Lobes 

 of the strophiole nearly equal, one-fourth the length of the seed. 



Var. a, gennina. 

 Capsule rounded at the base. Movi^ers white. 



Var. ^, uliginosa. 



Capsule wedge-shaped at the base. Flowers purplish or 

 bluish. 



In damp places. Very rare. Var. /3 discovered by Messrs. 

 Backhouse, in 1852, on the banks of the eastern fork of the 

 streamlet Avhich forms the White Force, Teesdale, Yorkshire ; and 

 more recently on one of the sugar limestone hillocks of Cronkley 

 plateau, near the former station. Var. a not known to occur in 

 Britain. 



England. Perennial. Summer and Autumn. 



An extremely small plant, the British specimens that have come 

 under my notice not being above 1 or 2 inches high, though on the 

 Continent it sometimes attains the height of 4 inches. It has the 

 mode of growth of P. calcarea ; but the large obovate crowded leaves 

 which form the rosette are close to the point where the rootstock 

 commences to branch (when it does so, for it often produces but one), 

 instead of at the end of the primary branches. The flowers are 



