331 



plant in so secluded a situation which seems almost to have become 

 extinct with us as an object of cultivation, and even of curiosity. I 

 can find no reference to any modern figure given by British writers of 

 this plant, neither have I ever met with the species in any old-fashion- 

 ed garden, in which such obsolete productions as this and many other 

 vegetables now discarded are still cherished and preserved. On the 

 continent, indeed, where its employment as a pot-herb is not gone out 

 of date, the garden Orache occasionally finds a place in the European 

 Floras, from becoming naturalized about the site of its cultivation ; 

 but I was little prepared to see this native of eastern Asia growing as 

 if perfectly at home on a lonely part of our own coast. I can only 

 conjecture that the seeds may have been thrown ashore from some 

 foreign vessel, feeling pretty confident that no such species of Atri- 

 plex is to be found in any Isle-of- Wight garden at the present day ; 

 if this be not its origin with us it must have been long naturalized, 

 though unobserved in the locality just given. Amongst the figures of 

 old authors, that of Gerarde (Johnston's ed.), p. 325, fig. I (White 

 Orache), is the best and most characteristic of the species as it presents 

 itself with us, except that the leaves are here very obtuse. The plant 

 is easily recognized when not in fruit, by the great size of its leaves, 

 which somewhat resemble those of beet in their fleshy, oleraceous 

 character, and those of spinach in form, but are much larger, the low- 

 ermost being often as long and wide as the expanded hand or bigger. 

 The fructiferous valves or perigones of the pistillate flowers are very 

 conspicuous from their great dimensions, and are broadly ovate or 

 nearly orbicular, slightly pointed and mucronulate, quite entire and 

 destitute of tubercles or crystalline granulations. They are besides 

 of a thin, membranous texture, particularly when fully ripe, at which 

 time they are elegantly reticulated with prominent veins, and bear a 

 considerable resemblance to the enlarged perianth of a dock. The 

 perigones are quite free to the very base, and distinct, or not imbedded 

 in fleshy tissue, subpedicellate, closely applied to one another by 

 their flat margins to their apex and enclosing a large vertical seed of 

 a greyish black or oftener yellowish colour, orbicular, much compress- 

 ed, covered with a pale, close-wrinkled skin, sessile at the base of 

 the perigones and quite unconnected with either of them. Amongst 

 these pistillate flowers are interspersed others that are hermaphrodite, 

 on very short but distinct pedicels, and bearing each a blackish and 

 coated seed like the rest, but smaller and horizontal, partially en- 

 closed by the five connivent perianth-segments, and in all respects 

 resembling the same parts in Chenopodium. " Strange is it," ex- 

 claims Linnffius, when speaking of the genus in his charming work 



