61 



Havvoith, but whether more is meant by that than the one being a 

 synonym of the other, I am unable to say. The Malvern Sedum 

 album only flowers in very hot seasons, and I have only gathered it 

 twice in that state. Mr. Thomas Westcombe, of Worcester, a very 

 careful investigator of our native plants, tells me that in his garden he 

 has cultivated the Malvern Sedum for many years without once 

 inducing a flower to appear, and I have often had it flourishing for a 

 long time in a pot in the same predicament. Mr. Westcombe further 

 says that the plant is very similar to, and indeed scarcely distinguish- 

 able from, a Sedum he received from Montreal, in Canada, under the 

 name of S. Monsregilense, and which in like manner has never 

 flowered with him under cultivation. If it is thought unlikely that 

 the Malvern rocks should nourish a Sedum not found certainly wild 

 elsewhere in Britain, parallel cases might be adduced with the Coto- 

 neaster at the Orme's Head, Potentillarupestris on Craig Brithen, and 

 Dianthus csesius on the Cheddar cliffs. 



Although I think T might justly object to the appearance of the star 

 as shedding but little light in several other instances, I shall now 

 confine myself to the notice of the poplars, three of which are struck 

 off" the roll of our native trees, and put under its baneful influence. 

 We may however properly consider the white poplar as made up of 

 two varieties, alba and canescens, for I am unable to distinguish the 

 two specifically. Sir J. E. Smith lays some stress upon the stig- 

 mas being four in the former and eight in the latter, but in fact even 

 in P. alba they are diflficult to distinguish as four only, their extremi- 

 ties being more or less divided, and thus they appear as six, seven, or 

 eight, according to the greater or less divarication of the lobe. The 

 palmate root-leaves, densely downy and white beneath, seem nearly 

 the same in both varieties, and little remains to distinguish them but 

 the wood, reported as much " firmer " in canescens than in alba, 

 arising probably merely from the drier ground in which canescens 

 usually gi'ows. Selby however remarks in his ' British Forest Trees' 

 that " if they are only varieties of one species, the original stock is 

 more likely to be the Populus canescens than the P. alba, the first 

 appearing to have a wider geographical distribution, and to be more 

 generally met with in a wild and indigenous stale, than the latter."* 

 Principally in the form of P. canescens, I have observed the white 

 poplar widely distributed, especially on the margins of streams to- 

 wards their sources in the hills, where its lofty, smooth stem and gray 



* Selby 's ' Hislory of British Forest Trees,' 8vo, p. 176. 



