TtUBIACEiE. 



215 



erowing on the seashore often prostrate and shorter. Stern much 

 less distinctly quadrangular than in the other British species, 

 thinly clothed with short woolly hairs. Leaves \ to 1 inch long. 

 Panicle verj compound, with numerous ascending compactly flow- 

 ered branches. Flowers | inch across, bright-yellow in var. a, but 

 ochreous in var. 0, which frequently has the leaves a little broader 

 and the stems always more distinctly quadrangular; from which, 

 and from the fact of its always being found in company with the 

 yellow-flowered G. verum and white-flowered G. clatum, it is con- 

 sidered by many botanists as a hybrid between these two. Fruit 

 very small, about the size of poppy (maw) seed, black. Plant deep- 

 green, the leaves generally roughish above and pubescent beneath. 



Yelloio Bcdstraio, or Cheese-Rennet. 



French, Gaillet Jaune. German, Achtes Labkraut. 



This is one of the prettiest plants that deck our hedge-hanks, gaily blossoming for 

 full three-quarters of the year. When luxuriant it is extremely cheerful and pretty ; 

 the yellow clusters, a foot in length, mingling not uncommonly with the great white 

 Bedstraw, and making the banks appear like silver inlaid with gold. It grows on our 

 driest sand-banks, and though the panicles are shorter, they have the same bright yellow 

 colour and cover many an arid place with verdure. The flowers will coagulate boiling 

 milk ; hence it is called rennet. The French prescribe them in hysteria and epilepsy. 

 Boiled in alum-water they tinge wool yellow. The roots dye a very fine red, not 

 mferior to madder, and are used for this purpose in the island of Java. According to 

 John Ray, the flowering tops when distilled make a refreshing beverage, and the roots 

 are useful as an astringent medicine. 



Gerarde says, " The people of Tuscanie or Hetruria doe use it to turne their 

 milk, that the cheese which they make of sheep's and goat's milk might be the sweeter 

 and more pleasant in taste, and also more wholesome." He adds,— "The people in 

 Cheshire, especially about Nantwich, where the best cheese is made, doe use it in their 

 rennet, esteeming greatly of that cheese above other made without it." 



SPECIES IV.— GALIUM DIFFUSUM. Hook. 



Plate DCXLVIII. {bis). 



« D. Don, MS." Hook. Fl. Scot. p. 52. 



G. cinereum, Sm. Eug. Fl. Vol. L p. 203. Sow. Eng. Bot. No. 2784* (non All.). 



Perennial. Stem weak, ascending, much branched throughout ; 

 branches ascending, glabrous. Leaves 6 to 8 in a whorl, firm, 

 strapshaped-linear, aristate, 1-nerved, glabrous, curved upwards. 

 Flowers all perfect, white, in long-stalked lax umbellate cymes 

 arranged in a las panicle, with ascending branches much longer 

 than the leaves from which they spring. Corolla lobes acuminate- 



* In the original edition the Nos. 2783 and 2784 are misplaced : the drawings 

 are correctly numbered, and the error has been rectified in the second edition. 



