CHARACEjE. 209 



Yar. y, rare. Recorded from Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire, Hickling 

 Broad, Norfolk, Cumberland, Anglesea, Roxburgh, Fife, Cork, Galway, 

 and Mayo. 



England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Summer, Autumn. 



A very variable plant, generally much encrusted. Stems 1 to 3 feet 

 long, often as thick as a crow-quill, and sometimes equalling a goose- 

 quill. The number and length of the spines is very variable, and they 

 appear to be more persistent in some forms than in others. The length 

 of the stipule-cells and bracts is also liable to much variation. 



One of the most striking varieties is the C. horrida of Wallman, 

 which is an unencrusted form with short branchlets, and very 

 numerous persistent spine-cells, and with bulbils on the buried 

 portion of the stem [which also occur on typical and other forms of 

 hispida]. Braun enters it as a species in the Consp. Char. Europ. 

 p. 6, and Exsicc. Nos. 71 and 87, but remarks, " Ch. hispidaa 

 proxima, cujus varietas marina esse videtur." Messrs. Groves give 

 " Goldens Common, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, Herb. A. G. More." 



[The variety baltica is a maritime form, distinguished by its greener 

 unencrusted stems, with more prominent primary cortical cells : the 

 spine-cells are very variable in number and size, being sometimes 

 reduced to mere papillae, sometimes short and more or less spreading, 

 sometimes (as in all the Cornish specimens seen) long and more or less 

 appressed to the stem, or (" spreading," H. & J. Groves). C. Liljebladii 

 is merely a large state of this variety, with much longer and more 

 spreading branchlets ; and C. Nolteana is a state in which the 

 branchlets are stout and uncorticated except the lowest joint.] 



Yar. pseudocrinita is perhaps a subspecies ; it is more spinous than 

 any of the forms of true hispida, except the form horrida, which it 

 considerably resembles, except in the relative size of the primary and 

 secondary cortical cells. I should be inclined to attach more impor- 

 tance to the character taken from the cortical cells, were it not that 

 in C. contraria, Braun, we have a plant bearing the same relation 

 to 0. foetida that C. polyacantha does to C. hispida. 



When we find two plants, which let us call A and B, have forms 

 allied to them which let us call a and b. If A is to a as B is to b, then 

 the probability is that a and b are but varieties of A and B. It is 

 the rule that species have varieties similarly related to them ; but 

 true species, and even subspecies, seldom follow any such relation. 



C. hispida bears considerable resemblance to the forms of C. 

 foetida,* in which the stem is furnished with spine-cells ; but it is 

 a stouter plant, with the stem more furrowed when dry, and with 



[* In the Monatsbericht Akad. Wissenschaften Berlin, 1867, p. 922, Braun states 

 C. hispida to be a subspecies of G. foetida.] 

 VOL. XII. 2 E 



