102 



The plant is remarkable for the bright varnished appearance of its 

 angular stem^ which at first is very generally erect, or very nearly so, 

 and is arrested in its growth quite early in the season. When the 

 light is deficient, here it pauses, and thus remains as a suberect spe- 

 cies ; * but where it has a full exposure, towards autumn it either 

 makes secondary branches, or the shoot becomes lengthened, and 

 finally roots ; but whether rooting or not, it is always suberect in the 

 first instance, and not truly arching, thus holding an intermediate 

 habit between the suberect and arching forms. There are very gene- 

 rally a few scattered hairs on the barren shoots, near the attachment 

 of the leaves. These are long and spreading, but so few as not to 

 take from the polished appearance of the surface. The prickles have 

 a broad base, are tapering, straight and deflected. The leaves are 

 quinate, remarkably flat, bright green and shining above,t less so but 

 not white beneath, with a pubescence of a few long scattered hairs ; 

 the leajiels are narrow ovate, pointed, the lower pair small, and al- 

 ways much directed backwards, — not recurved, but directed back- 

 wards in the plane of the leaf. The panicle is compound and leafy ; 

 the rachis polished, but with a pubescence of loose scattered hairs, 

 confined to the summit of the panicle. There are generally present 

 some short barren shoots, which are pubescent in the manner de- 

 scribed in the observations made above, when speaking on the habits 

 of the genus. In these shoots, and on the panicles, when the leaves 

 become ternate, the backward direction of the larger outer lobes of 

 the lateral leaflets, — ■ answering to the posterior leaflets of the quinate 

 leaves, — is very remarkable. This is excellently represented in the 

 figure of Weihe and Nees-t 



The names under which, in this country, this species has been con- 

 founded, are R. suberectus, R. plicatus, R. rhamnifolius and R. affinis, 

 from all which it may be distinguished by the compound leafy pani- 

 cle ; from R. suberectus [And.) and R. plicatus [W. 8s N.) by the 

 larger size of the prickles, which are very small, and with a slender 

 base in both these species ; and also by the leaflets not being sessile 



* Weihe and Nees mention the same variety of habit. They observe, " Species 

 hsBC, quae leliquis suae cognationis semper exilior, ubi nutrimentum deest, fere evecta 

 crescit." — Rubi Germ. p. 21. As mentioned in the text, I have generally observed a 

 deficiency of light, rather than of nutriment, to determine this difference. 



f I borrow this part of the description from that of Mertens and Koch, which 

 agree so accurately with our plant, that there cannot be the shadow of a doubt as to 

 its identity with their R. nitidus. — Deutschland's Flora, iii. 494. 

 I Rubi Gcrmanici, tab. iv. 



