Mr. Stuart's Account of some rare Plants. 75 



plant figured on plate No. 524, in Sowerby's English Botany, 



1 have come to the conclusion that it is an exotic. 



The principal points of difference between the plant de- 

 scribed by Babington and Syme and the plant I have found, 

 may be shortly enumerated. Tilloea muscosa has its stem 

 branched only at the base ; the stem of my plant is branched 

 throughout. The flowers of muscosa are axillary, sessile, 

 solitary, and trimerous, rarely tetramerous ; those of my 

 plant are axillary, stalked, one or more together, and 

 always tetramerous. Babington says that muscosa is about 

 an inch long, my plant is nearly three inches in length. 

 The leaves of muscosa are opposite, oblong, connate, 

 apiculate, on my plant they are opposite, narrowly oblong, 

 sub-sessile, blunt without a mucro-point. The seeds, instead 

 of 2 in each follicle as in muscosa, vary in numbers from 



2 to 5 or 6. Taking then into consideration all these differ- 

 ences, it would appear to be a foreign species. 



Lythrum hyssopifolitjm, L., I found on the banks of 

 the Gala. It has, I believe, never been found in Scotland 

 before. Mr. Syme says it is very rare, and gives near Roches- 

 ter, Kent, several places in Cambridgeshire, " Cholsey," 

 Berks (Soc. Bot. Ed.), and Wallingford, Oxford, as the only 

 localities he knows for it. 



Setaria viridis, Beauv., grows in considerable quantity 

 on the river banks all the way between Melrose and Gala- 

 shiels. It has never been found in Scotland before, and the 

 only stations given for it in England are London, Mitcham, 

 and Norwich. I have myself gathered it at the two first 

 mentioned places. 



A Herniaria, which I at first thought might be ciliata, 

 I gathered in the same locality ; but subsequent examina- 

 tion shewed that it did not completely agree with any 

 described British species. It partakes to a certain extent of 

 the characters both of ciliata and hirsuta, combining the 

 habit, colour, and ciliations of the former, with the bur-like 

 calyx, and almost the leaves of the latter. The hairs on 

 the stem, too, are intermediate between those of ciliata and 

 hirsuta, being neither completely straight as in hirsuta, nor 

 decurved as much as they should be in ciliata. 



An Illecebrum I picked up, but it also is an exotic, 

 differing very considerably from verticillatum, which is the 

 only British species. The stern is certainly procumbent and 

 filiform, as in verticillatum, but it is not at the same time 



