SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 43 



in colour 'at the base of their bell-like vases. 

 It has leaves downy and soft as velvet, plaited and 

 lobed with seven angles ; and though of a shrubby 

 nature, yet it is sometimes six feet high, and its 

 round stem branches chiefly at the top, where it 

 forms a leafy canopy. It adorns an islet off the 

 coast of Anglesea, but always grows wild on in- 

 sulated maritime rocks. On the Bass rock, that 

 lonely island in the midst of the waters, so re- 

 nowned in Scottish history, it thrives well ; and 

 Balfour, who has given us some account of the 

 botany of that island, says that the tree mallow is 

 the most important plant which grows there. This 

 author observes that the Lavatera, according to 

 Sibbald, existed at one time on the other islands of 

 the Frith of Forth, as on Inch Garvie and Inch 

 Mykrie ; but that it has now disappeared. He 

 adds, that on the rocks, below the fortifications of 

 the feass rock, it grows in great profusion, and 

 that in the month of July the place is quite gor- 

 geous with its flowers. It also adorns the Ailsa 

 Crag. Like all the mallow tribe, this plant is 

 very mucilaginous in its properties ; and its fibres 

 are so tenacious as to fit them for making useful 

 and strong ropes and cordage. Its name of Lava- 

 tera was given to it by Tournefort, in honour of 

 two physicians who were friends of that botanist, 

 but who are not known as men of science, and 

 were no way related to the celebrated physiogno- 

 mist of that name. 



The shrub, wiiich, because we see it so much 

 in sea-side gardens, seems more than any other 

 to be characteristic of our shores, and yet which 

 is, by some writers, thought rather to be a natu- 

 ralized than an indigenous plant, is the French 



