250 Wiltshire Notes and Queries. 
considerable degree of interest was manifested by the exhibition in 
the temporary museum, of a living plant of the rare “ Carduus 
tuberosus,” (Linn), which had been presented to Mr. Wheeler many 
years since by the late Aylmer Bourke Lambert, Esq., who origi- 
nally discovered it in August, 1818, growing profusely in a truly 
wild thicket of brush-wood, called Great Ridge, on the Wiltshire 
downs, between Boyton House and Fonthill, as a species new to 
the British Flora. This thistle not having been found for some 
years in the above locality, which is the only one at present known 
for it in England, induces me to draw up a short description of 
this species, in order that it may not escape the observation of 
those Botanists resident in the county, who may feel desirous of 
visiting its locality during the ensuing summer. 
The “ Carduus tuberosus.” Circium of Koch and Decandolle. 
Tuberosus Plume Thistle, or Boyton Thistle as it is more frequently 
called in the neighbourhood, may readily be known by its woody 
creeping root, sending down perpendicularly many elliptical, taper- 
ing, fleshy knobs, externally blackish. Stem about two feet high, 
erect straight, nearly solid, round furrowed, hairy, leafy, not at all 
winged, either quite simple and single flowered, or dividing with a 
branch or two near the top. Leaves green, and downy above, pale 
and cottony beneath; all deeply pinnatified with divided spinous 
pointed lobes, fringed with fine prickles, the lower ones on long, 
slightly winged footstalks, upper nearly sessile; none decurrent. 
Flowers solitary at the summit of the stem or branch, erect, bright 
purple, twice the size of “Carduus palustris” or arvensis, and more 
resembling “‘heferophyllus,” but smaller; Calyx ovate, with spreading 
leafy scales, a little cottony, several of the outermost tipped with 
small spines. Seeds short, obovate, with long, slender, feathery 
down. It is Perennial, flowering in August. 
Such is the excellent description drawn up for this species, by 
my late valued friend Professor Don, who gathered the plant in 
company with Mr. Lambert, for many succsssive seasons. 
Two other localities were published some few years since, for 
this supposed species, one by Mr. Westcombe, in the first volume 
of the “ Phytologist,” p. 780, between S¢. Donat’s and Dunraven, 
