320 BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. [September, 



BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. 



Blechnum bokeale, etc. 



Sir, — In answer to "Beta" (see ' Pliytologist,' N. s., vol. ii. p. 143), 

 I beg to state tliat in my List of the rarer British plants near Chiselhurst, 

 it was my particular wish that the specific name of BlecJmum should ter- 

 minate with "s," for the reasons there stated, and as there is no possi- 

 bility of forming the word spieant fi'om the verb sjnco (I make sharp at 

 the end, etc.) except in the third person plural of the indicative mood, 

 which construction it would be too absurd to suppose the great Linnaeus 

 guilty of. Is it not therefore much more probable, nay even certain, that 

 he wrote it spicans (ft-om the participle of the present tense used as the 

 adjective), and that the " s " was written, as it very frequently is nowadays, 

 like a "^," carelessly, and the error thus propagated? 



Chiselhurst, June, 1857. GrEO. B. WOLLASTON. 



ASPLENIUM ANCEPS. 



This is recorded in the ' Phytologist,' vol. ii. p. 71, as if it was a new 

 discovery. I gathered it at KUlarney in 1843, but did not identify it with 

 Solander's plant until ten years afterwards. It seems to be only a form 

 of ^. Trichomanes, under which it is noticed in Newman's ' Eerns,' ed. 3, 

 p. 249, published in 1854, and my Manual, ed. 4, p. 426. 



C. C. Babington. 



Eeigate Plants. 



Sir, — Your con'espondent J. S. MiU, in his Notes on the Eeigate Flora 

 (' Phytologist,' vol. i. p. 337), remarks that the absence oi Arabis hirsuta 

 from the immediate neighbourhood of Eeigate is a curious anomaly. I 

 was somewhat surprised to notice this remark on looking over the ' Phy- 

 tologist ' some time since, for when I was passing through Eeigate, in the 

 spring of this year, I chanced to notice and gather the plant in question 

 on an old wall in the town itself, on the right-hand side of the little bye- 

 lane leading down to the park gates. Can this habitat have escaped the 

 notice of the successive editors of Eeigate Floras ? 



Castleton of Braemar, Aberdeenshire. JoHN BartoN. 



Silene catholica. 



This plant was found in the village of Great Livermere, near Bury St. 

 Edmund's, Suffolk. The collector wishing to procm-e this must enter the 

 park, from the village above named, by the " park gates," or obtain per- 

 mission from the gate-keeper to pass tlu'ough the lodge on the left-hand, 

 and then proceed a short distance southward, amongst the trees separating 

 the park from the grounds of the parsonage house, where its habitat may 

 be found w^ith no difficulty. Just within the iron fencing forming the 

 boundary of the " old garden," in the park, may be found Astragalus Hypo- 

 glottis, near the gate opposite the bridge that divides the large sheet of 

 water. It is but a short walk from the station for the Silene. In an old 

 pasture in the same village, at the end of Ixworth lane, there is a plant 

 having very much the appearance of Gymnadenia conopsea in its botanical 



