DR ENGLISH BOTANY. 
base, erect or ascending, usually branched in large plants, and some- 
times with a few flowering branches below the umbel. Leaves 
alternate, strapshaped or linear-strapshaped, abruptly acute or truncate 
and apiculate, entire. Umbel-rays 3, rarely 4 or 5, two to six times 
2-furcate. Bracts lanceolate or triangular-lanceolate, unequally rounded 
at the base, and sometimes subhastate, from the presence of a tooth a 
little above the base, otherwise entire, acute. Involucral glands sub- 
lunate, with long slender diverging cusps. Capsule globular, trigonous; 
cocea rounded on the back, and each with a narrow slightly raised 
band of elevated points on each side of the faint dorsal furrow. 
Seeds rectangular-ovoid, keeled on the back, rugose, with very nume- 
rous irregularly disposed transverse fovea: having irregular ridgelike 
tubercles between them, pitchy black, tinged with ashy-white, with a 
small conical hooded caruncule. Plant glabrous; leaves thin, pale 
green, scarcely glaucous. 
A weed in cultivated fields, waste ground, and gardens, and gene- 
rally distributed in England and the south of Scotland; rare north of 
the Tay, and absent from the northern counties. Rather local, but 
widely distributed in Ireland. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Annual. Summer, Autumn. 
A slender plant, sometimes with the stems erect, sometimes spreading, 
especially when the stems are numerous from one root. The stems 
are 3 to 18 inches high. Leaves } to 1 inch long. Umbel frequently 
occupying half the whole height of the stem, but sometimes not above 
a quarter of it. Capsule 5/5 inch long. 
In this plant the leaves are sometimes acute and sometimes trun- 
cate and mucronate, when it becomes E. retusa, D.C. (non Forsk. 
nec Cav.), This form occurs in Britain, as well as the type, but I 
have not seen the form described with leaves 3-lobed at the apex, 
which is E. rubra, D.C. (non Cav.). 
Dwarf Spurge. 
French, Huphorbe fluet. German, Kleine Wolfsmilch. 
Section IV.—LATHYRIS. Gren. and Godr. 
Leaves opposite, decussate, without stipules. Flowering stem 
umbellate at the apex. Involucral glands lunate, with blunt ascending 
cusps. 
