200 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



should be added, was purposely written Wiedemannii, although 

 printed Wiedenmannii, because the collector's name was said to be 

 Wiedemann, and I therefore concluded Wiedenmannii to be a 

 printer's error. — Spencer Moore.] 



BRITISH EOSES OF THE MOLLIS-TOMENTOSA GEOUP. 



By the Eev. Augustin Ley, M.A. 



Much admirable work was done in this section of the genus 

 by the great British botanists of the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century — Sir James E. Smith and his contemporaries, Joseph 

 Woods and John Lindley. Since their time the chief advance in 

 this section has been made by the great Continental students of the 

 genus, notably Deseglise and Crepin. The critical work of these 

 Continentalists has been studied and partly reproduced in England 

 in this Journal and elsewhere, Deseglise, Crepin, and Christ have 

 given continual help to British workers in the study of our forms, 

 and much good field work has been done in Britain. Its results 

 were admirably systematized by Mr. J. G. Baker in his Monograph 

 of the British Eoses published in Journ. Linn. Soc, xi. 197-243 

 (1869). A revolution was effected by this publication in the in- 

 telligibility of many groups of the genus, notably the Caninm ; but 

 no great advance was attempted by Mr. Baker on his great English 

 predecessors in the Tomentosa. 



A few words may be in place here on the work of Woods, 

 Lindley, and Sir James Smith in this group. 



Woods, in his Synopsis of the British Species of Rosa (1816), 

 divides the group into five sjtecies— villosa, scabriwcula, heterophylla, 

 pnlchella, and tomentosa. Of these, villosa = mollis Sm. Eng. Flor. ; 

 heterophylla is stated by Smith to have reverted under cultivation 

 to mollis ; pidchella was founded on a single bush, and proved to be 

 dwarf mollis. Woods relies on the narrower leaflets, smaller, less 

 globose fruit, and entire petals to separate tomentosa from villosa ; 

 and on the pinnate sepals to separate scabriuscnla from tomentosa. 

 He distinguishes (by letters) fifteen varieties of R. tomentosa ; four 



of these have also names — hybrida, sylvestris, canescens, and incana. 

 Var. y. is undoubtedly the snbcristata of Baker's Monograph; incana 

 is also now placed among the Canina ; i. is certainly R. Sherardi 

 Davies ; *. sylvestris is the plant we still recognize under this name; 

 the remainder of Woods' varieties are hardly assignable with any 

 certainty. 



Lindley, in his Rosarum Monoyraphia (1820), enumerates two 

 species which appear to belong to this group — villosa and tomentosa. 

 Upon examination, however, it is found that under the former 

 name he is describing R. gracilis Woods, a plant belonging to 

 another section. R. tomentosa he divides by three letters : 



a. vera : " surculis arcuatis, sepalis compositis u = tomm- 

 . tosa Sm, 



