224 Smooth-stemmed Form of Foxglove 



universally regarded as a hybrid, but whether on other grounds than its 

 intermediate character does not appear. It has not yet apparently been 

 artificially bred since statements as to its parentage commonly indicate 

 uncertainty as to whether it should be regarded as derived from a cross 

 between amhigua and lanata or ambigua and laevigata. 



D. lanata was originally described by Ehrhart' as having the stem 

 glabrous, the raceme woolly. The figure and description of this plant 

 in Curtis's Botanical Magazine" emphasises the same character, the stem 

 being described as " smooth at the lower part, woolly above." So also 

 does the account given by Waldstein and Kitaibel"' of the plant referred 

 by them to this species. They describe the stem as naked but woolly 

 with white hairs among the flowers, this feature being also clearly seen 

 in the coloured plate which shows the stem destitute of hairs and 

 purplish-red in the lower portion, becoming green and covered with hairs 

 in the region of the inflorescence. Similarly Sampaio's description of 

 D. miniana as quoted by Coutinho states that the stem is everywhere 

 glabrous except the axis of the inflorescence which is more or less 

 tomentose*. Comparison of the descriptions by numerous writers of the 

 other forms enumerated above and examination of herbarium material 

 indicate that this same feature is characteristic of all of them in varying 

 degree. Now to several of these types, if not to all, systematists are 

 agreed in according specific rank, hence in the particular case of purpurea 

 the stem character cannot be held to afford ground for regarding nudi- 

 caulis as a crossbred. But there is yet another alternative supposition 

 which is not excluded and which appears to me worthy of consideration. 

 May it not be that nudicaulis is a precursor rather than a derivative of 

 pubescens ? As between such forms our conception of which is type and 

 which variety, in the absence of any historical record is largely deter- 

 mined by our knowledge of the relative numerical abundance of the two 

 forms and possibly may not invariably reflect the true genealogical order. 

 A mutation in this reverse direction, i.e. from nudicaulis to pubescens 

 would on the " presence and absence " view be simply the usual case of 

 variation by the loss or dropping out of a factor. Once in existence the 

 new recessive (on this supposition pubescens), in any area to which it 

 chanced to spread unaccompanied by nudicaulis, might well continue to 



' Beitrdge vii. p. 152. 



2 Vol. XXIX. PI. 1159. 



3 Descript. et Icon. Plant, rar. Hungariae, i. p. 76, pi. 74. 



* I have been unable to see or obtain Sampaio's original paper in A Revista, Porto, iii. 

 1905, but his account is quoted by Coutinho in the Bol. Soc. Broter., xxxii. p. 199, See 

 also Coutinho, A Flora de Portugal, 1913, p. 561. 



