PLATE IV. 



By J. 0. MANSEL-PLEYDELL, P.L.S., F.G.S. 



HE order Malvaceae, to which this plant belongs, 

 is mainly restricted to the temperate zone, being 

 as unsuited to high as to low latitudes ; Hum- 

 boldt gives the proportion of 1.50 for the torrid, 

 1.200 for the temperature, and .00 for the glacial. 

 The genus Lavatera is still more restricted, 

 being confined to Europe and Western Asia, and there only in 

 the neighbourhood of the sea. One species, Lavatera dborea, 

 reaches as far north as Great Britain. Ray found it in the Isle 

 of Portland as long ago as the latter end of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, It is now cultivated in the gardens adjoining our coast- 

 line, probably from parent stocks which at one time clothed the 

 cliffs before its conspicuous flowers had excited the cupidity of 

 man , thereby resulting in its extinction in a wild state. 



Nyinan'snewedition of his "Conspectus Floras Europse" makes 

 no addition to the list of European Lavaterse, but unites L. pall- 

 escens with triloba, L. hispida with olbia, and L. ambigua with 

 thuringiaca, thus reducing the species of the first edition from 

 nineteen to sixteen. 



* Journal of Botany, New Ser., vol. vi., 1877- 



