602 



and on banks at Ventnor.* Abundant about Steephill, in the grounds 

 &c. In Pelham Woods, and generally throughout the Undercliff in 

 moist shady places, and on the ledges of the rocks that shut in that 

 romantic district to the northward. I think I have seen it in Quarr 

 Copse, near Binstead, and in the Priory grounds to the westward of 

 Ryde, but finding no entry made of its occurrence beyond the limits 

 of the Undercliff, I am probably mistaken in these habitats. Assuredly 

 too near O. minor in character to be satisfactory, and as a variety of 

 that species I had long deemed it. Latterly, however, I have inclined 

 to a different opinion, and am now disposed to consider it with Mr. 

 Babington as quite distinct. Considerations founded on geographical 

 distribution have principally led to this change of opinion. O. He- 

 derae is quite a southern, maritime, and western plant, and is one of 

 those species that indicate with us the point of transition from the 

 oriental to the occidental type of vegetation. O. minor, on the other 

 hand, is as much an inland as maritime species, and its distribution 

 tends rather to the eastern than to the western side of the kingdom in 

 England, whilst it is apparently wanting in Ireland, where O. Hederse 

 grows not unfrequently.f I am not aware of any station for this spe- 

 cies in the interior of the county or Isle of Wight, where the clover- 

 fields are overrun with O. minor as a pernicious agricultural weed, 

 nor have I ever seen it along any part of the coast even of mainland 

 Hants. The two species differ considerably in aspect, which I think 

 may be fairly adduced as collateral, though not primary evidence of 

 their distinctness. O. Hederse is a slenderer plant in general than 

 O. minor, the stems of a deeper purple, and often two, three, four or 

 more from the same swollen base, which very rarely happens in O. 

 minor, in which the stems are almost always solitary, or at most two 

 or three from the same caudex. The flowers in O. Hederae are usually 

 fewer, and always more distant than in O. minor, besides other diffe- 

 rences, such as the shape of the stigma, which it is needless here to 

 advance as arguments for their separation. The figure of O. Hedera? 

 in E. B. Supplement, tab. 2859, is admh-able, as is the accompanying 

 description by Mr. Babington, who gives this species as perennial 

 without a sign of doubt in the Manual, which the occasional remains 

 of former stems and its habit of growing in clumps seem to confirm. 



* The progress of building has gone far to diminish its frequency of late years at 

 these two places. 



f All the stations given for O. minor in Maekay's 'Flora Hibernica' evidently 

 helomr to O. Hedeva?. 



