WEEDS AND WILD PLANTS 



Better to me the meanest weed 



That blows upon its mountain, 

 The vilest herb that runs to seed 



Beside its native fountain. TENNYSON. 



FLOWERING PLANTS 



BY G. C. DRUCE 



Among the alien species recorded in Druce's " Flora of 

 Oxfordshire " which owe their origin to the Botanic Garden 

 and are now naturalised on the handsome walls erected by 

 Danby are Hieradum amplexicaule L., Chondrilla juncea L., 

 Senecio squalidus L., the Oxford Ragwort, Linaria purpurea 

 Miller, and L. Cymbalaria Miller, which was there in the time 

 of Dillenius, and was the plant which Linnaeus expounded in 

 so able a manner as to commend him to Dillenius. 



The walls of Rose Lane formerly had Valerianella carinata, 

 which Baxter found in May, 1841, and figured from this place 

 in his " Phaenogamous Botany," and Phleum paniculatum 

 Huds., recorded by Sibthorp in his " Flora " of 1794 ; but these 

 are no longer there. The plant of Rumex scutatus which 

 grows in the vicinity may owe its origin also to the Garden. 



The unspotted Lamium maculatum L., on one of the 

 islands near the Cherwell, originally found by Baxter in 1815, 

 is probably another of the stragglers, as was the solitary plant 

 of Althaea officinalis in the Long Meadow in 1815; but on 



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