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Notice of the Discovery of FUago Jussiaei near Saffron Walden. 

 By G. S. Gibson, Esq., F.L.S. 



This plant I gathered four or five years ago, about eight miles from 

 this town, observing a very marked peculiarity in the manner of its 

 growth, but not properly examining it at that time, passed it over as 

 simply a variety of F. germanica, and have specimens of it so labelled 

 in my herbarium. My attention was again called to it a short time 

 ago by Joshua Clarke, when on a botanical excursion in Cambridge- 

 shire, and on examining the specimens brought home, and comparing 

 them with those of F. germanica from the same locality, I was at once 

 convinced that it was a distinct species, and probably F. Jussiaei of 

 Cosson and Germain. This opinion has been confirmed by several 

 of our most eminent British botanists, and I have since been informed 

 by one of them that it has been found simultaneously in Dorsetshire 

 and Sussex. The locality for it in this neighbourhood is road-sides 

 and cultivated fields, on a sandy soil, in the borders of Cambridgeshire 

 and Essex. It frequently grows intermixed with F. germanica, but 

 always, so far as I have observed, preserves its distinctive characters. 

 Whether or not it is similar to the one called F. apiculata by G. E. 

 Smith, and described in a former number of the ' Phytologist ' (Phytol. 

 ii. 575), I am unable to decide, for although it appears to agree in some 

 respects with that description, yet in others there is a decided difference. 



The following are some of the more striking points by which it may 

 always be readily distinguished from F. germanica. Heads with much 

 fewer flowers, often not half as many as in F. germanica, generally 

 less cottony, particularly the young heads, which are overtopped by 

 the leaves. Flowers much larger, rather paler in colour, and sharply 

 pentagonal. Involucral scales rather broader. Leaves broader, not 

 spear-shaped, as those in F. germanica always are, but spathulate, 

 broadest near the end, apiculate, narrowed towards the base ; more 

 loose and spreading on the stem. Stem much more branched, branches 

 spreading, nearly horizontal in old plants, slightly ascending in young 

 ones. Probably it will be found to be not an uncommon plant on 

 light soils. 



G. S. Gibson. 



July 12, 1848. 



