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REMARKS ON PYRUS LATIFOLIA Symb. 



By T. R. Archer Briggs, F.L.S. 



Some remarks on Pyrus communis c. cor data Desv., were made 

 by me last year in the ' Journal of Botany,' and appended to 

 them will be found a statement (p. 209) respecting some trees of 

 Pyrus latlfolia Syme, that I had raised from seed of wild Devon 

 bushes, and have growing here at Fursdon, Egg Buckland. Up to 

 that time these cultivated trees, of which I have three, had borne 

 no flowers, but this present year two of them have blossomed 

 freely, one having had over fifty, the other over twenty cymes of 

 flowers. Neither in leaves nor in inflorescence do these seed- 

 produced trees of mine show any departure from the certainly 

 wild, and as I believe, indigenous, Pyrus latifolia of Devon and 

 E. Cornwall. The results before us, through the raising of these 

 trees from seed, are, I think, of some importance when taken in 

 connection with some very interesting particulars by the late Dr. 

 Boswell, " On the forms (subspecies or hybrids?) of Pyrus Aria 



Hook.,' 1 in the Rep. Bot. Ex. Club, 1872-74, pp. 17-25. In the 

 course of his remarks he says, " There is a very general feeling 

 that the plant, which I believe ought to be called P. latifolia " (it 

 was Dr. Boswell's P. scandica in E. B., ed. iii.), "is something 

 more than a variety of P. Aria." Still, notwithstanding this, he 

 adds further on, after saying that " Garcke, in his ■ Flora of North 

 and Middle Deutchland,' describes P. latifolia under the name of 

 P. Aria-torminaUs," " Certainly in the texture of the leaves and 

 the character of their pubescence when young there is a departure 

 from P. Aria in the direction of torminalis, and in the broader- 

 leaved specimens the form of the leaf and of the lobes approaches 

 that species, and were P. latifolia not so abundant the most 

 probable solution would be that it was a hybrid between P. Aria 

 and P. torminalis, and there is nothing: in its distribution in 



a 



England to forbid the supposition." The coming of ray youu 

 trees so perfectly true from seed is opposed to the view of a hybrid 

 origin for Pyrm latifolia, as, I may add, is also very markedly its 

 distribution in Devon and E. Cornwall. Dr. Boswell, after 

 remarking on differences between P. latifolia and P. en- Aria, adds 

 respecting the former, "The extremes in British specimens lie 

 between specimens sent from Symoud's Yatt, Gloucestershire, by 

 Kev. Augustin Ley, in which the leaves are nearly as broad as 

 long, with large and very acute lobes, to the Leigh Wood plant, 

 figured as P. .scandica i u E. B., ed. iii. p. 481, in which the leaves 

 are only about half as broad as long and the lobes short and much 

 blunter." I find the leaves of Devon plants nearly, or quite, as 

 broad as those of specimens from Coldwell Rocks and Symou's 

 Yatt, Orioucestershire, though somewhat longer, more rounded at 

 the base than in the Symond's Yatt specimen (one without inflor- 

 escence), more serrate, and less uniformly toothed and lobed. 

 borne description of the fruit, gathered from wild bushes in Devon, 

 will be found m my « Flora of Plymouth,' to which I may add that 



