1861.] BOTANY OF SPAIN. 297 



of plants, was Tarragona; a fortified town, picturesquely situated 

 on a hill overlooking a broad space of sea from north to south, 

 and commanding westward a wide stretch of uneven rocky 

 ground, in which cultivation and waste are blended in varying 

 proportions. I will not lengthen the record by speaking again of 

 any plant mentioned in my former paper, except Dorycnium 

 suffruticosum, Lonicera implexa, and Phaynalon saxatile, all of 

 which I here found in flower ; and except the Prickly Pear and 

 Palmetto, which I have already mentioned that I first saw at this 

 place. Here too was another Cistus, with large white flowers, 

 Cistus umbellatus, a Helianthemum of some writers ; and grow- 

 ing copiously on a wild rocky hill, the original Gladiolus of our 

 flower-gardens, G. byzantirms, far more beautiful, to my think- 

 ing, than the spotted ones of modern introduction. This plant I 

 had only before seen wild at Floridia, near Syracuse. It is not 

 a plant of the French Flora, though France can boast of several 

 species of this fine genus. The one I best know, G. communis 

 of Bertoloni, segetum of Grenier and Godron, which grows 

 profusely in the corn at Avignon and elsewhere, is of a paler 

 colour than G. byzantinus, with petals of more unequal length, 

 and hung more loosely together. The G. commupds of the 

 French botanists I do not know. 



But Tarragona supplied too great a harvest of botanical trea- 

 sures to be catalogued without some sort of arrangement. To 

 begin, then, at the beginning, I will first mention Clematis Flam- 

 mula, the decumbent though climbing species of the south of 

 Europe; where however the more luxuriant Clematis of our 

 own hedges and thickets is also not unfrequent. This last I do 

 not remember seeing in Spain, except at ]\Ionserrat. Of Fumi- 

 tories there were two, the parviflora, and a less common plant, 

 with a dense oval head of dark flowers, 7. spicata. The remain- 

 ing Thalamiflor<£ which I noticed were those common garriyue 

 Helianthemums, the white H. pilosum (allied to polifolium) and 

 that very variable plant, the bright-yellow H. italicum ; three 

 species of Silent, S. quinquevulnera, S. hispida (I believe) of 

 Desfontaines, recognized by the ' Flore de France ' only as a 

 Corsican plant, and a third {S. turbinata), not in the French ■ 

 Flora at all, which will be more particularly mentioned hereafter; 

 Althaa hirsuta, a plant rather general in the South ; Erodium 

 romanum, still more common, resembling a large-flowered E, 



N. S. VOL. V. 2 Q 



