332 THE COMPOSITE FAMILY, 



tapering into the stalk, sometimes more or less cordate at the base, usually 

 slightly hairy, and often of a pale glaucous-green underneath. Flower-stems 

 erect, 1 to 2 feet high, rarely quite leafless, usually with 1 or 2 leaves near 

 the base like the radical ones but smaller, and 1 or 2 smaller narrow ones 

 higher up, but occasionally with several leaves. Flower-heads rather larga 

 and yellow, usually 3 or 4 only, but sometimes as many as 20 or 30, in a 

 loose terminal corj'mb. Involucres and peduncles more or less clothed with 

 black, glandular liairs, intermixed with a shorter, rusty-coloured down, 

 whilst the stem is glabrous, or bears in the lower part long, white, woolly 

 liairs, which are sometimes very dense cIosg to the stock. Scales of the 

 involucres narrow, the muer ones nearly equal, the outer few and much 

 shorter. 



On banks and old walls, in meadows and rich pastures, bushy places, and 

 open woods, throughout Eiu-ope and Russian Asia, from the Mediterranean 

 to the Ai'ctic regions. Very common all over Britain. Fl. all summer and 

 autumn. Exceedingly variable in the shape and teeth of the leaves, in colour 

 and hairiness, in the number of stem-leaves and of flower-heads. In alpine 

 situations the leaves are usually much moi-e enth-e, often obovate. A marked 

 variety, growing in woods and on banks, v.ith a much more leafy stem, hag 

 long been distinguished under the names of H. sylvaticum (Eng. Bot. t. 

 2031) or 3. vulgatum, but it is everywhere connected with the more typical 

 form by a series of intermediates which defy classification. From the Savoy 

 H. and the umbellate H. it may be known by the radical leaves larger than 

 the stem ones, and persistent at the time of flowering, except where they have 

 been accidentally choked by the surrounding herbage, or withered by drought 

 or other accidental causes. 



4. Honeyrrort Ha-v^kT^eed. Hieracium ceriuthoides, Linn. 

 (Eng. Bot. t. 2378,_/ro»i a garden specimen.) 



The habit and radical leaves are those of the mountain varieties of the 

 wall H., but the whole plant is still more glaucous, and has generally more 

 of the woolly hairs, especially about the stock. The flower-stems bear -but 

 few rather large flowers, and 1 or 2 leaves usually entire, and always clasp- 

 ing tlie stem with broad, roimded auricles, and the radical leaves are usually 

 remarkably obovate. 



In western Europe, chiefly in the Pp'enees, more doubtfully extending to 

 the western Alps and Corsica, A very doubtful British plant. The only 

 specimens I have seen which really resemble the Pyrenean ones (in the 

 dried state at least) are from the mountains of the west and north of Ireland. 

 The Scotch and English and most of the Irish ones so denominated are 

 usually varieties of the wall M. or of the Savoy M. 



5. Umbellate Haivk'vreed. Hieracium umbellatum, Linn. 

 (Eng. Bot. t. 1771.) 

 The perennial stock only forms buds in the autumn, which do not expand 

 into a tuft of spreading leaves, as in the wall H., but in the following year 

 grow out into a leafy, erect, rigid stem, 1 to 3 feet high. Radical leaves, if 

 any, few and withering away before the tune of flowering. Stem-leaves from 

 narrow-lanceolate to oblong, coarsely toothed or nearly entire ; the lower 

 ones stalked, and all tapering at the base. Flower-heads rather numerous, 

 on rather short lateral branches towards the summit of the stem, several of 

 which usually (but not always) start from bo nearly the same point as to 



