4 Prof. C. C. Babington on the British Species of Arctium. 



drawing, preserved in the Botanical Department of the British 

 Museum, that Smith (as was unfortunately too common) caused 

 Sowerby to alter his drawing before making the engraving, by 

 adding greatly to the wool on the heads, making the florets 

 protrude more from the involucre, and drawing them with the 

 limb of the corolla more inflated. (The plate of A. Lappa is 

 much more altered, and therefore even less satisfactory.) 



The first fact that shook my confidence in the correctness of 

 my nomenclature was the discovery that a very different plant 

 was cultivated in the Cambridge Botanic Garden as A.tomentosum; 

 and I soon also found wild plants exactly like my A. tomentosum, 

 but nearly or quite devoid of web-like down. This astonished 

 me considerably ; but as I had been taught to consider such 

 down as very variable in quantity, and as Fries says ( f Nov.' 264) 

 that the heads are sometimes nearly glabrous, I supposed the 

 name to be bad, and the species to exist sometimes with webbed 

 and sometimes with glabrous heads. But what still more sur- 

 prised me was my not being able latterly to find any plants of 

 the supposed A. tomentosum possessing the web. In the third 

 of his fasciculi of ' Notes/ M. Crepin remarks with wonder that 

 I have not taken any notice of the peculiar shape and glandular 

 condition of the corolla of A. tomentosum, and also that I state 

 the petioles of that plant to be solid; whereas he finds that 

 structure of the corolla and a hollow petiole to be always present 

 in his (the true) L. tomentosa. After a careful reconsideration 

 of these remarks, and a re-examination of my specimens and of 

 living individuals, I have convinced myself that my A.tomentosum 

 is not the plant of Lamarck and Willdenow, and that the figure 

 in ' Eng. Bot/ of A. Bardana is incorrect. I think that our A. 

 tomentosum must be joined to A. majus. There is often con- 

 siderable difference in the look of the plants, but next to none 

 in characters — certainly not more, as I now think, than will 

 admit of their being forms of one species. 



If, therefore, my A. tomentosum is only a state of A. majus, 

 that species is much simplified. It is the only British species 

 which has the heads arranged in a corymb, and has constantly 

 solid petioles. In what I consider as its typical form, the invo- 

 lucres are quite glabrous and green, and are so full of fruit as 

 to be hemispherical and very open at the top when the fruit is 

 ripe. In the other form (my former A. tomentosum) the invo- 

 lucres are sometimes, although rarely, webbed, are always pur- 

 plish, and are nearly spherical even when the fruit is ripe, owing 

 apparently to the smaller quantity of fruit produced. These two 

 forms seem to be reproduced from seed without much, if any, 

 alteration : and probably some botanists will think that I might 

 retain them as species ; but that is not now my opinion. 



