56 



Remarks on some Starred Plants in the New Edition of the 'British 

 Flora,' hij Sir W. J. Hooker and Dr. G. A. Walker-Arnott. By 

 Edwin Lees, Esq., F.L.S. 



I QUITE agree with the observation in the Preface to the ' Phytolo- 

 gist' for 1850, that " Nothing can be more confused, contradictory 

 and unsatisfactory, than the capricious decisions of our publishing 

 botanists as regards the nativity of plants growing wild in Britain." 

 I may add, too, that in many instances there appears to be no fair 

 and just appreciation of evidence in the matter, and a judgment is 

 given perhaps founded only on experience of a restricted district; or 

 at any rate caprice is apparent when various plants are compared that 

 bear the degrading mark of naturalization. Indeed, unless some 

 rational rule be employed as an approximation to truth, I can see no 

 use in using the asterisk or dagger at all : let every observer form his 

 own opinion. 



I have been led to think of this by an examination of the new edi- 

 tion of Hooker's ' British Flora.' Here I see Anemone apennina, 

 Adonis autumnalis, Corydalis lutea, and Aquilegia vulgaris, all set 

 down with the same starry mark denoting introduction. I take these 

 almost-at-random classes of supposed interlopers. In Adonis we may 

 admit an agrarian growing " amongst corn," or in manured land, and 

 thus associated with cultivation ; and we may see without doubt 

 Corydalis lutea stealing out of the bounds of the garden, and adorn- 

 ing some adjacent wall or convenient bank. So as Anemone appen- 

 nina is only found in a few spots, maintaining its position with 

 difficulty, it may justly be considered of foreign origin ; but how can 

 the columbine be properly placed in the same category with it, 

 growing as it does in hundreds of English woods and out-of-the-way 

 places. Why a Herefordshire carter would enlighten a botanist as 

 to the place where to find a wild columbine. But then it must have 

 got out of some coltage-garden, for don't we always see it there with 

 oxlips and daffydowndillies } Yes, there they are, sure enough ! 

 Perhaps there is a raspberry-bush in the garden too, from whence 

 those now seen in the adjacent woods may have taken their rise ! 

 But a poor observant poet I shall here show may beat a learned 

 closet-botanist at a fact of eye-sight experience, for what says poor 

 Clare, the Northamptonshire poet, anent the columbine ? 



" The columbines, stone-blue, or deep night-brown, 

 Their honeycoinb-like blossoms hanging down. 



