146 APPENDIX. 



PEAS EARTH-NUT 



(Lathyrus Tuberosus). 



A most interesting floral find of the summer of 1888 

 was that of the Peas Earth-Nut (Lathyrus tuberosus) by 

 R. D. Postans, Esq., who observed it in the shingle beach 

 at Eastbourne in full bloom in the first week in August. 

 Its flowers have been described as crimson ; but their hue 

 may be better expressed as pinky carmine. The first 

 specimen sent had only a portion of its creeping rootstock. 

 Afterwards, however, using a trowel, the rootlets, with 

 their remarkable tubers, were also found. One of these 

 weighed a quarter of an ounce. The locality in which the 

 Sussex plant occurs, i.e., the shingle beach at Eastbourne, 

 differs greatly from that mentioned by Gibson about Fyfield 

 in Essex, viz., " in several corn-fields, and also along the 

 hedge banks and borders of the same fields." That it is a 

 coast plant, however, appears from its second discovery. In 

 his " Flora of Plymouth," published in 1880, Mr. Briggs 

 states that about 1856 he saw it growing " on the first 

 embankment from Plymouth, by the side of the Laira 

 estuary " ; that he afterwards searched for it in vain, and 

 gave up all hopes of seeing it again, until one day in June, 

 1871, when he came upon it in its old locality. The old 

 woodcut of Gerard of this plant, headed Terrae glandes, is 

 an excellent one, and allowing for the absence of 

 technicalities, his description of it is equally good. " The 

 pease earth-nut," he says, " commeth up with slender and 

 weake stalkes; the leaves be thin and little, growing upon 

 slender stems, with clasping tendrils at the ends, with which 

 it imbraceth and taketh hold of such things as stand neere 

 onto it ; the floures on the top of the stalkes are like to 

 those of pease, but lesser, of a red purple colour, in smell 

 not unpleasant ; in their places come up long cods, in which 

 are three or four round seeds ; the roots be thicke, long, like 

 after a sort to acorns, but much greater, blacke without, 

 gray within, in taste like to the cheese-nut, out of which 

 beneath doth hang a long slender string." He adds that 

 by the Dutch these peculiar tubers are called "tailled raise, 

 of the similitude or likenesse of domesticall mise, which the 

 blacke, round and long nuts, with a piece of the slender 

 string hanging out behind do represent " ; and to a dead 

 and shrivelled mouse they have certainly a quaint re- 

 semblance. 



