ICOSANDRIA— POLYGYNIA. Rubus,. 409 



In hedges and thickets frequent. 



Shrub. July. 



Stems biennial ; the barren ones very long and trailing, unless 

 accidentally supported, sometimes arching, glaucous and pur- 

 plish ; green in the shade ; they are brittle and full of pith, ge- 

 nerally with 5 slightly prominent angles, and besprinkled with 

 copious, rather small, prickles, phiced without any order and 

 not confined to the angles, all very nearly straight, though a 

 little deflexed. The flowering stems are round, more upright, 

 not quite so prickly, throwing out abundance of young hairy 

 leafy branches, terminating in nearly simple, coiymbose, hairy 

 and downy panicles, which are armed with straight prickles, 

 and besprinkled with sliort glandular bristles. Leaves on the 

 barren stems of 5 very large, broadly ovate, somewhat heart- 

 shaped, pointed, sharply serrated leaflets, often precisely like 

 hazel-leaves ; peculiarly soft and minutely hairy, for the most 

 part, beneath, though Ehrhart's specimen is almost smooth ; the 

 2 lowermost nearly or quite sessile ; the prickles of their/oo<- 

 stalks and ribs moderately hooked : the leaves of the flowering 

 branches are uniformly of 3 much smaller, more cut leaflets ; 

 all light green and very soft, not white or hoary, at the back. 

 Stipulas and bracteas linear-lanceolate, often very narrow. Fl. 

 large, white, earlier than most of the genus. Cal. hoary and 

 hairy, dotted with minute, scarcely prominent, glands, often 

 prickly at the base, spreading in the flower, reflexed when in 

 fruit. Berry large, agreeably acid, of larger and fewer grains 

 than in R. fruticosus, and of a browner black, ripened before 

 that oi X\\e. fruticosus and its allies. 



The late Mr. G.Anderson, an excellent observer, found the barren 

 stems of this species taking root at the extremity, as often as 

 those of R. fruticosus. That this accident however is not very 

 general in either, appears from the anxiety with which country 

 nurses and quacks seek it out, in order to cure children of the 

 whooping cough, by drawing them through the arch thus form- 

 ed by the stem of a Bramble. The glands on the calyx and 

 flower-stalks of R. corylifolius, though not hitherto noticed, di- 

 htinguish it from fruticosus as essentially as the scattered 

 straight prickles of the stem, or any other mark whatever. 

 These glands nearly agree witli R. leucostachys, as do the 

 straight prickles of tlie panicle. 



11. R. cccsius. Blue Bramble, or Dew-berry. 



Stems prostrate, round, glaucous, prickly and bristly. 

 Prickles deflexed. Leaflets three; hairy beneath; la- 

 teral ones lobed externally. Calyx embracing the fruit. 



R.cyesius. Linn. Sp. PI. 706. fVUld. v. 2. 1084. FL Br. 542. Engl. 



