ON THE GENUS RUBUS. 443 
All the Brambles have a tendency to produce a smaller number 
of leafits on the flowering branch; but this tendency is stronger 
in some species than in others. In some quinately-leaved Rudi 
we hardly find a leaf with so many as five leaflets on the flowering 
stem; in others they extend even into the panicle. The panicle 
itself is much more leafy in some plants than im others,—some- 
times with ternate and sometimes with simple leaves of a full and 
even a large size. 
Weihe and Nees, in the ‘Rubi Germanici,’ represent the 
leafitsin R. Sprengelit and R. saxatilis as having an attenuate base. 
In all other species it is rounded or cordate, but the general shape 
of the leaflet is rarely properly ovate or cordate ;—when it is so 
it is a thing to be noticed ;—but the usual form widens upward 
and is afterwards contracted into an acuminate termination. It 
is subrotund, oval- or almond-shaped,* with a rounded cordate 
base. Except perhaps R. tomentosus, I think the whole tribe has 
acuminate, or what are sometimes termed cuspidate,} leaves; in 
none are they apiculate. I do not mean to say that these cha- 
racters will be found in every individual leafit ; for the leaves of 
Rubus are by no means of one uniform character, but that the 
majority of the leaves will exhibit them, not only in every spe- 
cies, but in every individual. All the leafits of all Rudi are irre- 
gularly serrate, but in a manner varying from incise or laciniate 
to an arrangement where the teeth are almost all equal. In all, 
also, there is a little apiculus to each serrature, so that the term 
crenato-serrate would perhaps be not misapplied to them. The 
leaves on the flowering branches are generally more irregular than 
they are on the barren, and more so on those at the base of these 
branches than on the upper part. The leaves on the flowering 
branches are often ternate when those on the barren shoot are 
quinate, and these ternate leaves are often very broad below and 
* T have on a former occasion proposed to apply the term elliptic to leaves which, 
bemg somewhat like lanceolate, were yet too broad to be included under that name. 
This seems to be considered as rather too bold an application of a familiar geome- 
trical form, and I therefore now adopt the term almond-shape to express the same 
thing. 
+ In the ‘Philosophia Botanica’ guspidate is said to be acuminate, but with a 
rigid pomt. Following out this idea, I have, in the ‘ Tourist’s Flora,’ defined it as 
a hardened extremity to the leaf, not depending on the prolongation of the midrib. 
The other use of the word, in which it stands for abruptly acuminate, without re- 
ference to its substance, is not confined to the writers on Rubus. 
