VOL. XVIII. (3) NOTES ON HELOSCIADIUM 239 



recording, now or at any time ! It is simply a var. in which 

 all the leaf segments are capillary. I have seen one of Fries's 

 own specimens in the British Museum, and have no hesitation 

 in naming our Gloucestershire specimens as this var. It 

 grows with the type ; between the two, intermediates occur. 

 This variety occurs in both E. and W. Gloucestershire, and the 

 Isle of Wight (Hb. Bailey). I have seen a specimen from 

 Cumberland in the same herbarium which is very near it. 

 In Ireland it occurred near Connor Hill, Kerry (Coll. D. Oliver, 

 1853), in the R. Ma'am, Galway (Hb. Shoolbred), R. Clare, 

 at Tuam, Galway (Hb. Praeger), and Mr Bailey has a speci- 

 men from Connemara, Galway, which must be put under the 

 variety. 



H. nodiflorum and H. inundatum our two common 

 species, inhabit, as we have seen, very similar localitites. The 

 latter is more confined and Hmited in its choice of watery 

 spots ; it particularly affects slow moving and fairly free 

 waters hke canals, or ponds on upland heaths. It cannot do 

 with as many competitors as the strong H. nodiflorum. But 

 the two, nevertheless, often appear in close proximity, especially 

 in the slow waters of low lying districts. This is markedly 

 the case in certain parts of the Eastern and E. Midland Coun- 

 ties of England, and over the whole of Ireland, except the 

 mountainous S.-West. 



Now in the very places so described occurs also a third 

 form of Helosciadimn, which, I beheve, is a hybrid of the two, 

 and which I described in the Irish Naturalist for Jan., 1914, 

 under the name of x Helosciadium Moorei Riddelsdell. This 

 form has been known now for 60 or 70 years, and has generally 

 been regarded as a variety of H. inundatum, but recently 

 was elevated to the status of a species by Mr Druce. It has 

 fallen to my lot, as a result of gathering together large col- 

 lections of Helosciadium from various botanists, in preparation 

 for a description of them for the new Cambridge Flora, to see 

 a very large and varied number of specimens of H. Moorei 

 from nearly every known locality. I will indicate enough of 

 my observations to lead up to one important illustration of the 

 phenomena of hybridity. 



