502 



and well-drained meadow, does it often incur the ban of the neat and 

 diligent husbandman. 



Carduus acaulis. An abundant and rather troublesome plant in 

 dry upland meadows and pastures, throughout the county and Isle of 

 Wight. Extremely common on all our high chalk downs, to their 

 very summits. The state producing a stem several inches high I have 

 found near Swainston, in this island. The heads of handsome flowers, 

 sprinkled over and closely sitting on the short elastic turf, show like 

 tufts of crimson silk on a ground of green velvet. The very rare C. 

 tuberosum, found in the adjoining county of Wilts, may reward a di- 

 ligent search in the thickets that partially clothe the sides of our 

 Hampshire downs. 



Silybum marianum. On dry hedge and ditch-banks, by road-sides, 

 and in waste ground at the outskirts of towns ; more truly wild in 

 woods, thickets, and on our elevated downs, here and there abun- 

 dantly, but not general. On Ryde Dover, and in St. John's Street, 

 Ryde, in small quantity, but now, 1 believe, extinct in both places. 

 Truly wild in various spots along the UnderclifF, in rough wooded 

 ground, as between Ventnor and Bonchurch, not far from the Pulpit 

 Rock, where it used to be very frequent and luxuriant some years ago, 

 when that part was in a state of nature, and unencroached upon by 

 buildings as at present. Under the cliffs above the road near Mi- 

 rables, and on the edge of the down at the top of the cliff above 

 Woolverton, near St. Lawrence, in considerable plenty in both sta- 

 tions. Rough pasture ground at Niton, and by the road-side near 

 the Sandrock Dispensatory, as also occasionally in many other parts of 

 the island. In some of its stations it may have resulted from long 

 antecedent cultivation, but the milk thistle is rarely to be seen in our 

 modern gardens, at least here, although it is said to have been once 

 grown for the table, and eaten in the manner of artichokes. 



Serratula tinctoria. In woods, thickets, .and dry, heathy, bushy 

 places ; common. In Quarr Copse, Shore Copse, Stroud Wood, 

 Firestone Copse, and elsewhere about Ryde in plenty. Woods at 

 Wootton, Cowes, Yarmouth, Newtown and other parts of the island 

 very frequent, and 1 believe equally so over the entire county. I 

 have several times known the saw-wort mistaken for a Centaurea by 

 young or inexperienced botanists, to which genus it bears certainly a 

 deceptive resemblance in habit and inflorescence. A variety with 

 white flowers and uncoloured involucral scales I picked on a bank 

 close to Whitwell, Isle of Wight, September 6th, 1845. 



Lapsana communis. In waste and cultivated ground, hedges, 



