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HEDGE BEADSTRAW AMONG STONE WALLS. 



F. A. LEES. 



On the mountain limestone of Craven and the Oolites of 

 North Yorkshire, this aggregate (perhaps not quite fixed) 

 species, at elevations where the typical road-hedge Mollugo is 

 running out, and Galium montanum (austriacum) beginning 

 to appear, the close observer of variation constantly finds 

 growths (in not-normal sites) which strike him as ' different,' 

 either in leaf contour, or stature, with quite indeterminate 

 characters of inflorescence as regards size of seed or pedicellar 

 dichotomy. Such an example Mr. Pickard found recently on 

 the Stockdale road above Settle, at circa 800 feet. Naturally, 

 one tries to find such a noticeable growth with a name, formal 

 or varietal, but, alas ! careful examination and reference to 

 Dr. F. N. Williams' Prodromus Flora Britannicce (Pt. 5, p. 216, 

 1909) emphasises what I have just said — he has been through 

 the mill — that at the zonal limit lines where a plant is just 

 'running out,' at the end of its endurance, all sorts of vegetative 

 variations, telling of inexpressible stresses of local ' climate ' 

 will be in evidence (not perhaps beyond a season or two). 

 Mr. Pickard's gathering cannot be called typical datum Thuill, 

 and in oval-obovate membranous leaflet-of-whorl, it only 

 resembles that ' umbrosum ' (shade growing ?) form — not even 

 ' var ' of Williams, to which he refers G. insubricum of Gaudin, 

 and Syme. 



In the note on stational distribution, Dr. Williams notes 

 that, normally an ubiquit on the Permian marl-lime tract, it 

 grows up to 270 metres in Westmorland, and adds, further, 

 that it will hybridise with Galium verum (often growing on the 

 same lynch of wayside bank or undercliff, and that a Symean 

 variety ' Bakeri ' judging from Yorkshire specimens has ' no 

 characters' by which to separate it from datum Thuill. ! Here 

 in west-York Craven, we have an exactly similar abnormal 

 growth facially varying, as two brothers or sisters may, and 

 yet without any clear invariable habit or value of line that 

 can be put into definite words. It is all very interesting to 

 the enthusiastic herbarium maker, young or old ; but I think 

 the lesson is not hidden from us too deeply to be unearthed. 

 Nature ' recks not ' (of course) of the systematists' feeble 

 forcible efforts to express her, because ' She ' or ' It," as you 

 like, is merely our term for a Law of cell-life invariable in 

 its greater, and even lesser lines of scaffolding ; but elastic 

 for all that, the ' finished article,' be it leaf contour or vestment 

 showing the final, and as it seems, proximal effect of repression 

 or restriction on the part of something externe (quite invisible 

 if atmospheric, tho' not so inobvious in a water plant immersed 

 in its medium). But, an we wish, a pretty clear correlation 



Naturalist, 



