K(CLERIA SPLENDENS AS A BRITISH PLANT ~ B16 
' The plants of St. Vincent’s Rocks, Berry Head, and Babbi- 
combe which I collected are, however, all K. gracilis; plants from 
the locality have been named KX. gracilis var. gypsacea by Dr. Domin.’ 
though evidently preferring full sun and wind exposure, and dis- 
liking the proximity of other grasses, y ften grows with Thymus 
Chamedrys (as in France) and Apinelia, te associated occasionally 
with Avena pubescens. When growing under the partial shelter of a 
protruding cliff, or hawthorn-bushes, it wee in greater luxuriance, 
some of the culms being eighteen Gnvahies high, and flowered freely. 
On the upper Downs the specimens were often barren ; but this may 
have been partly owing to sheep grazing, or the exposure to traffic of 
passers-by, and possibly in part from its being unable to bear the 
competition of Poa pratensis and other grasses. 
he continental distribution, as given by Nyman in the Con- 
spectus, for K. asetacea is ‘‘ Hisp. Pyr. Gall. mer. oce. ete. Ligur. 
Pedem. Parm.”; and for K. valesiaca Gaud. (which is put with 
Ky, setacea Pers.) “ Hisp. Pyren. Arvern. Delph. ete. Helv. Tirol.” 
In France it extends along the western shore up to the Loire, so 
interesting group of species which comprise Cephalanthera rubra, 
Stachys alpina, Arabis stricta, Apinella, Campanula persicefolia, 
Dianthus gratianopolitanus, Draba aizotdes, and Helianthemum poli- 
folium, which are confined to the south-west of Britain. 
The British - although distinctly included in the aggregate 
species, does no exactly answer to either of the varieties described 
by Grenier and Godson in Flore de France, but Dr. Domin names it 
var. glabra of those authors. The following is a description of our 
British form : 
Rootstock shortly eee close, often forming very hard tufts, 
attaining a considerable age, and covered with remains of the 
fibro-vascular bundles of the leave, which form a roughish, netted, 
hi 
ledge, it becomes of a greyish hue, and the interior, in old speci- 
mens, is not rarely penetrated with a mycelium. Stem 3-18 inches 
high, erect; or the external ones of each tuft sharply ascending 
thin, smooth; glabrous below, more or less clothed with soft, aoe 
ubescence immediately beneath the panicle or even from above the 
h : ves Wi is 
middle of L with bald, smooth sheath, which 
triate n dry; la of basal leaves narrow, rather rigid, 
mostly convolute, and closely enrolled when , with 4-5 con- 
the 
Kae strands, glabrous. In fresh state they much resemble 
the a vel form of the sea thrift. Lamina of the stem-leaves 
short, sometimes almost obsolete, truncate, toothed. Pani an i to 
22 inches long, close, sometimes ‘laxer at the base, but more eon: 
Zz 2 
