18. 11. CARPINIFOLIUS. 1.S9 



the space between the veins; the long hairs always give a 

 very soft feel to the underside. 



Specimens gathered in the Lake District by Mr Hort 

 have much fewer and shorter hairs, but a dense coat of 

 whitish felt beneath their leaves. They appear almost 

 certainly to l)e the 11. vulgaris (W. & N.), which is probably 

 rightly combined with li. carpini/olius by Dr Metsch, I 

 cannot agree with that botanist in joining H, villicaulis to 

 them. Dr Johnston's B. rhamnifolius agrees with these 

 plants from Mr Hort. 



In the most typical specimens the panicle is rather short, 

 nearly simple, cylindrical and leafless, only a few of the 

 lowest branches being conspicuously separated from the rest 

 and from each other; those branches are axillary and fall 

 considerably short of the leaves; they are also racemose, 

 whilst the very short branches of the rest of the panicle are 

 corymbose or 1 -flowered. Strong panicles may sometimes 

 be found where the axillary branches are increased in 

 number, at the expense of those which are ultra-axillary, 

 and the whole panicle becomes rather pyramidal. When 

 the panicle is weak the branches are often nearly all reduced 

 to 1 -flowered peduncles and the inflorescence is nearly a 

 simple raceme. 



I believe that this is the plant named li. carpinifolius in 

 the Ruhi Germanici, although the terminal leaflet is not so 

 uniformly cordate at the base as the authors of that work 

 supposed, neither is it constantly acuminate as they seem to 

 have thought. There is another difliculty attending the 

 identification of our plant with that similarly named by 

 continental authors. Our plant arches so highly that its 

 stem may often be supposed to be suberect : continental 

 botanists describe the stem as arcuate-decumbent. My 

 specimen contained in Reichenbach's Flora exsiccata was 

 gathered by Dr Weihe, but is unfortunately very imperfect. 



