240 Sir J. E. Smith's Botanical History 



zag fibres. Leaves composing numerous radical tufts, dark green, 

 equitant, sword-shaped, ribbed, two inches long. Stem erect, 

 from four to six inches high, solitary, simple, round, quite smooth, 

 naked ; triangular at the base, where it often bears one small leaf, 

 not rising above the others. Floioers pale green, very small, in a 

 little oblong, obtuse, generally very dense head, from a quarter to 

 half an inch in length. The partial ^OKer-s/o/As are entirely want- 

 ing, the calyx being crowded close to the main stalk, with hardly 

 any perceptible hractea. The base of the Hower within the caly.x: 

 is however elongated, assuming, as the fruit advances, the appear- 

 ance of a thick stalk, swelling upwards, half a line in length. 

 C«A/.t' very deeply divided into three acute segments, small, mem- 

 branous, and whitish. Petals hardly a line long, obovate, gene- 

 rally quite obtuse, concave, greenish-white, longer than the sta- 

 mens. Germeiis combined into a nearl}' globular form, with three 

 furrows. Styles extremely short, spreading, with abrupt, slightly 

 capitate, stigmas. Capsules converging, roundish-obovate, each 

 about the size of mustard-seed, obtuse, with a minute spreading 

 point crowned by the style. 



Such is the original Lapland plant of Linnaius, exactly agree- 

 ing with specimens from Scotland and the county of Durham, as 

 represented in Engl. Bot., and answering precisely to the T. pusilla, 

 adopted by Pursh from Michaux. With this has all along been 

 confounded a Swiss species, which we are next to describe, and 

 ■which is the only plant known to botanists of the South of Eu- 

 rope as the Linnaan Antherkum calyculatum. Dillenius caused 

 this confusion, as appears by the Flora Lapponica ; where Linnaeus, 

 ■who strongly suspected these two plants to be different, but never, 

 to the day of his death, saw more than one of them, was induced 

 by his learned correspondent to consider them as varieties of each 

 other. 



2. T. al. 



