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Remarks on the Hieracium macu latum of Smith.* By James 

 Bladon, Esq. 



Having bestowed considerable attention on several species of Hiera- 

 cium the last three seasons, but more especially maculatum, I now 

 beg leave to lay before the Society, the result of my observations. 



I have used the name "maculatum" from the circumstance that 

 the first plants I observed corresponded exactly with Smith's descrip- 

 tion of his plant in * English Flora,' vol. iii. p. 360, and since then, the 

 varieties I have observed have been more easily referrible to this 

 description of maculatum than to any of the others that are now 

 considered cognate varieties. 



The leaf The leaves are subject to very great variations, from 

 broadly ovate to nearly linear, the margins vary from entire or with 

 one or two teeth about one sixteenth of an inch in length, to twelve or 

 fourteen teeth, some of them half an inch in length and one quarter 

 in breadth : one character I have observed to be constant through all 

 the variations in form, at the base of the leaf (both radical and stem 

 leaves), the membrane tapers to the midrib gradually, and is con- 

 tinued a short distance on the petiole, never ending abruptly as in a 

 common ovate leaf The purple blotches on the leaves from which Sir 

 J. Smith took the name, I believe to depend chiefly on the season ; 

 in a hot dry summer I have found hardly any plant whose leaves 

 were not stained, the latter part of the present summer being rather 

 moist, it is equally rare to find one with stains : in the early part of 

 this season the marked plants were in much greater proportion than 

 they are now. The foregoing observations respecting the mark- 

 ings of the plants refer to those on the same walls, and are therefore 

 most probably from the identical roots that plants sprung from in pre- 

 vious seasons. The radical leaves of maculatum I have observed to 

 decay much sooner than any other species of Hieracium, being often- 

 times withered completely by the time the second flowers are blooming. 



The flowers. In the ' English Flora ' great stress is laid upon the 

 number of flowers in discriminating the various species : the number 

 of them is the most variable character of the plant : I have had plants 

 with only two or three flowers, and others on which I have counted 

 near fifty flowers and buds of all sizes at the same time. Besides the 

 diflerence in the number in separate plants, the same plant exhibits 

 different numbers according to the time at which it was examined 

 (as remarked in a note forwarded to the ' Phytologist'). The only con- 



* Read before the Botanical Society of London, Gth November, 1846. 



Vol. II. 4 q 



