337 



ON THE 

 VARIETIES OF ARENARIA CILIATA. 



J. G. BAKER, F.R.S., F.L.S., 

 Royal Herbarium, Kew ; Ex-President of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union. 



Arenaria ciliata Linn, appears to have been first noticed by Tourne- 

 fort in his 'Institutiones' (p. 243) in the year 1700, under the name of 

 • Arenaria alpina serf yllif olio multicaulis et multiflora.' Gay notes 

 that his typical specimen so labelled is still preserved in the herbarium 

 of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. When Linnaeus planned out in 

 detail the binomial nomenclature in 1753 (Species Plantarum, ed. 1, 

 p. 425) he gave it the very appropriate name of Arenaria ciliata, and 

 this name has been maintained for the type by all succeeding 

 authors up to the present day. The typical form has a wide range 

 of distribution. It extends from Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Nova 

 Zembla, southward by way of the Jura, Alps, Pyrenees, and Car- 

 pathians, to Central Spain, North Italy, and Transylvania. In the 

 mountains of Central Europe it reaches an altitude of 8,000 ft. 



The typical form may be described as follows : — A. ciliata Linn. 

 Perennial; stems densely tufted, pubescent, 1-3 in. long, spreading; 

 leaves oblong or oblanceolate, acute, sessile, narrowed to the base, 

 1-6 in. long, moderately firm in texture, strongly ciliated in the 

 lower half of the margin ; flowers 1-5 to a stem, on short erect 

 terminal pedicels; sepals ovate-lanceolate, acute, \ in. long, strongly 

 three-nerved, ciliated on the edge towards the base ; petals oblanceo- 

 late, white, a little longer than the sepals ; expanded flower \ in. 

 diam. ; capsule a little longer than the calyx, dehiscing down to the 

 base into five lanceolate horny valves ; seeds copious, brown, 

 reniform, rugose. 



Figures will be found in ' Flora Danica,' tab. 346 ; English 

 Botany, tab. 1745; ed. 3, tab. 238; and Reichenbach's Icones, 

 tab. 346 ; and dried specimens in Fries' Herb. Norm., and several 

 other published sets of specimens. The plant figured as ciliata in 

 Sibthorp and Smith's ' Flora Graeca,' tab. 438, is a distinct species, 

 now called^, cretica Spreng. 'Flora Danica,' tab. 1269, cited by 

 Pritzel for A., ciliata, is not the typical form, but A. norvegica. 

 A. multicaulis Wulfen in Jacq. Collect. 1, tab. 17, fig. 1 (A. ciliata 

 var. frigida Koch) is simply a condensed alpine form of ciliata, with 

 narrower closer leaves than in the type, and short usually one- 

 flowered stems. It is very curious that, although A. ciliata is so 

 widely spread on the continent, it is absent from Britain, and yet 

 re-appears on the mountains of Ireland. It was discovered by 



Nov. 1889. x 



