1093 



Island, particularly amongst the sand-hills at its western end. Sandy 

 cliff and banks between Christchurch and Bournemouth, abundantly, 

 and most profusely (covering hundreds of acres almost exclusively) 

 on the sandy shores of Christchurch Harbour, Calshot Beach, &c. 

 This grass is remarkable for hnving the culms solid or with a central 

 perforation only, an unusual feature in the order of Gramina. 



Phragmites communis (Arundo Phragmites). By rivers, ditches, 

 ponds, in wet meadows, woods, thickets, osier-beds, damp hedges, and 

 wet, marshy places in general ; abundantly throughout the county. 

 Plentiful in the Isle of Wight, even in salt-marsh ground, as along the 

 Yar, between Freshwater and Yarmouth, &c. Var. @. Culms sterile, 

 procumbent or trailing, twenty to forty feet or more in length. 

 Phragmites communis, b. repens, Meyer. Chlor. Hanov. p. 650 ; W. 

 A. B. in Phytol. i. 146. On wet banks of sand and slipped clay along 

 the south and east shores of the Isle of Wight. Common along the 

 shore at Puckaster Cove, trailing to a great length on the flat sands 

 or hanging from the clay-banks above the beach, also in other places 

 along the south coast. Near the Shanklin extremity of Sandown Bay, 

 and rooting at the joints. In a ditch between Sandown Bay and 

 Lower Morton Farm, I found it with culms of considerable length, 

 floating, and emitting fibres from the joints, Aug. 1842. At Bern- 

 bridge, Dr. T. Bell Salter. This singular form of the common reed 

 of our ponds and marshes, appears to have been first remarked by 

 Merrett ('Pinax,' p. 11) in this island, and his brief notice quoted by 

 Dillenius, at the end of his edition of Ray's ' Synopsis,' in a list of 

 uncertain, obscure or ill-authenticated species, on which it was de- 

 sirable, if possible, to have light thrown. Meyer, in the ' Chloris 

 Hanoverana,' is the only foreign author I find who has described this 

 prostrate form, which he says occurs in the island of Norderney (the 

 only German station for Polypogon littoralis), and Koch, Syn. 2nd 

 edit., in sandy fields of the plain or valley of the Rhine (Rheinflaehe). 

 A more particular account of this variety will be found in a former 

 volume of the ' Phytologist,' cited above. 



Obs. — Cynodon Dactylon it is likely may be detected on the sandy 

 sea-shores of this county, or perhaps in the sandy fields of the inte- 

 rior, as, notwithstanding it has hitherto only been remarked in Eng- 

 land as a maritime and western species, on the continent it is by no 

 means confined to the vicinity of the sea, but is found abundantly in 

 various parts of France, Germany and Belgium considerably remote 

 from the coast, and ranging as far north as Berlin and Hamburgh. It 

 already approaches our limits very closely, having been detected some 



