19. R. VILLICAULIS. 143 



rather racemose and ascending, wliilst those wliich are ultra- 

 axilhiry are divaricate and corymbose. Boreaii informs us 

 that the petals are white, and they are so drawn in the 

 Ruhi Gerinanlci ; but all the plants that I have seen have 

 pink petals. The plant sent by M. Questier agrees with ours. 



Now that the thick and felted-leaved plants are separated 

 from this species and referred to R. leucostachya /3 vestitus, 

 it is tolerably constant in form. It still includes nearly all 

 the plants placed under R. sylvaticus in my Synojysis, and 

 agrees well with the characters there given. 



A ])lant, gathered at Cowleigh Park near Malvern 

 (which has very round, but still slightly obovate, leaves with 

 a cordate base and a strong cusp, also a loose panicle with 

 long axillary lower branches), was named R. affinis by Mr 

 Lees many years since. It seems to be a form of R. villi- 

 caulis, for the stem, although now nearly naked, shows 

 manifest signs of having once been pilose, and there are also 

 traces of a very few slender aciculi or the bases of the strong- 

 ish setre. From this condition of the stem it clearly cannot 

 he R. affinis. 



I am indebted to Mr Lees for a specimen of what seems to 

 have been an exceedingly large decumbent (or rather probal^ly 

 arcuate-procumbent) plant gathered in Birchin Grove near 

 Worcester. It has very long strong prickles which are 

 rather unequal in size. Its leaves are all ternate with 

 enormous cuspidate leaflets; the lateral shortly stalked, very 

 broad, lobed on the lower edge ; the terminal roundly 

 obovate; all coarsely and irregularly dentate, pilose above, 

 hairy on even the finest veins beneath. This I consider to 

 be the form assumed by R. villicaulis when growing in deep 

 shade. 



A specimen gathered by Mr H. C. Watson near Barwell 

 Court, Surrey, in 1854, has only a distant resemblance to 

 R. villicaulis, although apparently a real form of that species. 



