PINGUICULA. 



199 



Dies Villosa, (our Minima, No. 5,) in many particulars, the 

 stem being hairy, and in the lower part the hairs tipped with 

 a viscid fluid, like a sundew. But the Villosa has a slender 

 sharp spur ; and in this the spur is blunt and thick at the 

 end." (Since the hairy stem is not peculiar to Villosa, I take 

 for her, instead, the epithet Minima, which is really definitive.) 

 The pale one is commonly called ' Lusitanica,' but I find no 

 direct notice of its Portuguese habitation. Sowerby's plant 

 came from Blandford, Dorsetshire ; and Grindon says it is 

 frequent in Ireland, abundant in Arran, and extends on the 

 western side of the British island from Cornwall to Cape 

 Wrath. My epithet, Pallida, is secure, and simple, wherever 

 the plant is found. 



5. Pinguicula Minima : Least Butterwort ; in D. 1021 

 called Villosa, the scape of it being hairy. I have not yet got 

 rid of this absurd word ' scape,' meaning, in bot- 

 anist's Latin, the flower-stalk of a flower grow- 

 ing out of a cluster of leaves on the ground. It 



is a bad corruption of ' sceptre,' and especially 

 false and absurd, because a true sceptre is neces- 

 sarily branched.* In 'Proserpina,' when it is 

 spoken of distinctively, it is called ' virgula ' (see 

 vol. i., pp. 112, 115, 116). The hairs on the 

 virgula are in this instance so minute, that even 

 with a lens I cannot see them in the Danish plate : 

 of which Fig. 3 is a rough translation into wood- 

 cut, to show the grace and mien of the little thing. 

 The trine leaf cluster is characteristic, and the 

 folding up of the leaf edges. The flower, in the * 

 Danish plate, full purple. Abundant in east of 

 Finmark (Finland ?), but always growing in marsh 

 TJIOSS, (Sphagnum palustre.) 



6. I call it ' Minima ' only, as the least of the FlG - 3 - 

 five here named : without putting forward any claim for it to be 

 the smallest pinguicula that ever was or will be. In such sense 



* More accurately, shows the pruned roots of branches, rre8)j trpoara 

 TO^V ti> opfffin \4\oiirev. The pruning is the mythic expression of the 

 subduing of passion by rectorial law. 



