60 



that a plant once used for rustic services, and therefore an attendant 

 about cottage hedges, may also be aboriginal to the country. 



I must try to rescue another plant, rather a favourite of mine, from 

 the stars and stripes of bondage, and claim its freedom as a native- 

 born Briton. This is the Sedura album, which I think appears with 

 the brand for the first time. That it may in general be seen the cap- 

 tive of walls, and even chained like a domesticated pet upon roofs, 

 may be true enough, but I shall contend for its being born free. Who 

 will accompany me at this misty time to the slippery dripping rocks 

 of the North Hill, at Malvern, dark with the purple Parmelia or the 

 leather-like Umbilicaria'' Higher up, beyond those deep-green, rigid, 

 yet close-shorn, gorse-bushes and withered brakes, away from any 

 path except the narrow track of the sheep, there upon mouldy ledges, 

 with difficulty reached, and among fleshy leaves of the Cotyledon, 

 nestles in little trailing tufls, with its turgid red leaves, the Sedum we 

 are in quest of And upon those bold lichened rocks hath been its 

 seat time out of mind. Oh ! but — some 



" Hermit good, who lived in that wood," 



probably St. Werstan, whose martyrdom appears in the stained abbey- 

 windows below, was kind enough to plant the Sedura album here for 

 the benefit of botanists ! Among the flowers surrounding his figure 

 in the stained lights, something like gorse, fern, foxgloves, and prim- 

 roses really do appear, and as in this primitive flora the Sedum is not 

 evidently visible, what can we infer but that some monk must have 

 planted the little Sedum .? When the Sedum album was first recorded 

 as growing on the Malvern rocks I am unable to say, but it appears 

 in the second edition of Withering, published in the last century, on 

 the authority of Dr. Stokes, who edited that issue, and Mr. Ballard, a 

 surgeon, of Hanley Castle. Mr. Watson in his ' Cybele,' though my 

 * Botany of the Malvern Hills' might have been quoted for the fact, 

 leaves the matter as ii' sub judice, and puts the question, " Is S. album 

 a native upon the Malvern rocks ?" Only a resident of the vicinity is 

 properly qualified to answer. It has most certainly every appearance 

 of being indigenous upon the precipitous rocks 1 have noted, which 

 are away from any path, where no even hermit's garden could have 

 ever been, and at an elevation of about eight hundred feet. Below 

 these rocks the plant never occius, nor have I, in an experience of 

 Malvern of more than thirty years, ever seen the Sedum album on 

 walls oi' gardens about the village or town, as it has now become. 

 Mr. Borrer has stated that the Malvern Sedum is S. teretifolia of 



