606 BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. [July, 



seems probably a corruption) is another flattering appellation of the same 

 old-fashioned plant. 



Wake-Robin. — " From its acrimony" (Miller's ' Gardener's Dictionary'). 



Dock. — A. -Sax. docce. 



Coioslip. — Possibly for ' cow's lip,' from some fancied resemblance in the 

 segments of the corolla. 



Charlock, Carlock, Cadlock, etc. — A.-Sax. Cerlice. Cerlice might be a 

 corruption from gearlic, annual. (See on this point 'Notes and Queries,' 

 i. p. 470, 3rd series.) 



Sauce-alone. — " The Prussians eat the leaves with salted meats in the 

 spring. . . . They are useful with lettuces anil the colder salads." (With. 

 7th ed. vol. iii. p. 775). 



Rampe. — Query from rapiim, an excrescence on the roots of trees (so 

 used in Seneca, Ep. 87), and applied to Arum, maculatum on account of 

 its farinaceous roots. ' Eapum' is used properly only of the roots of 

 Brassica, etc. (thence rape-seed and ' Rapa,' the specific appellation of the 

 Turnip) ; by later Latinists, however, of any plant with an enlarged or 

 tuberous root. Gerarde has " Rapuni sylvestre, ilampions" (^Campanula Ra- 

 punculus). Eamps or Rampions (^Allium ursinmn) may probably be ex- 

 plained in the same way. W. T. Dyer. 



ZOSTERA MARINA. 



We heard a great deal, some short time ago, of a vegetable produc- 

 tion bearing the name of the Zostera marina. But Zostera is plainly no 

 feminine noun of the first declension, but the accusative singular, after the 

 Greek mode of declension, of the masculine noun Zoster of the third, — in 

 Greek ^toaT-qp, -os, 6, a girdle, and also a kind of seaweed. We ought 

 therefore to say ' Zoster marinus.' Zostera, indeed, is the form which hap- 

 pens to be employed by Pliny : — " Folia lata colore viridi gignit, quod 

 quidam Prason vocant, alii Zostera" (N. H. xiii. 49) ; but Zostera is here 

 plainly the accusative. W. T. D. 



Helleborus ecetidus. 



In reference to some observations oflFered some time since relative to 

 the appearance of plants in localities not before noted, or rather after a 

 lapse of some years, 1 have observed this year, in a very small part of a 

 wood that has been partially cleared for the purpose of planting some Fir- 

 trees, that at least a score plants of Helleborus foetidus have made their ap- 

 pearance. Myself and others have for years carefully examined this part of 

 the wood, and have never seen a single plant growing in that part of the 

 wood, and only a plant or two growing throughout the remaining portion. 

 On the opposite side of the river, some fourteen years since, I should 

 think hundreds of specimens may have been obtained. Since that time, 

 or within a year or two after that time, I have never observed a single 

 specimen, although I have repeatedly looked for it. I intend watching 

 this plant, and hope to communicate again upon this subject. 



Gletostom, near Ross, April, 1863. BuRTON M. WatkINS. 



Cardamine fkatensis. Variety of. 

 Enclosed I send you two specimens of variation in Cardamine pratensis. 

 In one of them the raceme has a tuft of leaves at the top. In the other, 

 after the flower has fallen, the pod swells, and ultimately bursts on one 



