129 



NOTES ON BRITISH RUBI. 



By Edward Gilbert, M.D. 



I. — The Suberecti. 



Before venturing to make any comments on the British Rubi 

 which may be noticed by eminent students of the British Flora, it 

 seems to me only proper that I should give some slight reasons for 

 my boldness. The main one is that I have worked very hard the 

 last ten years (with the exception of one when I was very ill) in the 

 field and at my own and the National Herbaria in an attempt to 

 determine the position every Rubas I could find held in the Rev. 

 W. M. Rogers's Hayxdbook of British Rubi, and in the London Cata- 

 logue of British Plants. In this effort I have had the kind and 

 essential assistance of Mr. Rogers himself. Neither was I quite a 

 novice in the study of Rubi, for I began it in the year 1857 under 

 the guidance of a most careful and clever botanist, Mr. George 

 Jordan, of Bewdley. Another reason is that the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of Tunbridge Wells seems to be favoured with an extra- 

 ordinary variety of Rubi. To a small portion of that my search 

 for them has been mainly limited. In a ninety hours' methodical 

 search of our common one year I found over forty different Rubi. 

 In the year 1902 Mr. Rogers favoured me with a visit for a week, 

 when the Rubi were at the height of their flowering. He was 

 astonished at the variety to be found. A considerable proportion 

 of them he was unable to refer decidedly to any species or variety 

 known to him — even one of the most abundant, which he proposed 

 to call E. tonbridgensis. The effect of all this work aud comparison 

 of notes on my mind has been a strong impression that the variety 

 of forms of Rubi is practically unlimited, and that many of them 

 are so closely inter-related that it is impossible to separate them 

 distinctly, or to assign every individual to a distinct place in any 

 scheme of arrangement ; in fact, that this distinctness is not to be 

 found in nature with regard to a large proportion of them. 

 Another 



ability to 



p impression is that the genus is one of wonderful adapt- 

 its surroundings — extremely "plastic 1 ' one may say. 

 Every spot — wood, lane, hollow, or hill, or what not — seems to 

 make more or less of its own impress on the Rubi that grow there, 

 even the different sites on a varied common such as ours. So 

 much is this the case, that these local distinctions sometimes 

 obscure those that are specific by the resemblance they produce. 

 The great differences found in the form and appendages of the 

 leaves of the same bush seem to me further evidence of this great 

 instability. Even the same bush I have known alter its features 

 so much in two successive years that specimens from it in each of 

 those years would have been supposed to come from quite different 

 Rubi, if their source had not been known. Is not this adaptability 

 of the Rubi the chief source of their ubiquity ? 



A third impression which has grown strongly upon me is that 



Joubnal of Botany. — Vol. 45. [Apkil, 1907.] h 



