34 CEUCIFER.E. [Cardaminc. 



last station I find it sparingly, 1841 !!! In very great abundance and luxuriance 

 on a high sloping field or hank at the West end of Whitepit (chalk-pit), Newport. 

 Root whitish, tapering, very rigid, usually much branched, biennial, or accord- 

 ing to others perennial. It is certainly perennial with us, as the dried remains of 

 the last year's flowering and still attached stems sufficiently testify. Stem 1 or 2, 

 seldom except where the main stalk is broken off more numerous, from about 12 

 to 18 inches or 2 feet in height, simple or more rarely slighlly branched above, 

 the branches upright, round, slender, rigid, leafy, erect, often flexuose and recurved 

 at the summit, hispid beneath with copious spreading and deflexed, simple or 

 partly forked white hairs, above either quite glabrous or nearly so. Leaves nume- 

 rous, hispid like the stem and fringed with simple or forked hairs, radical ones 

 nodulate, oblong, elliptical-oblong or obovate-oblong, sometimes inclining to 

 oblong-lanceolate or spathulate, scabrous with the tubercular bases of the hairs, 

 entire or with a few distant, shallow, tooth-like serratures ; stem-leaves numerous, 

 erect but not appressed, sessile, truncate or subsagittate at base, at other times 

 rounded or slightly cordate, their margins often a little deflexed, usually with a 

 rudimentary branch and abortive raceme in the axil of each ; the inferior leaves 

 mostly as hairy as those at the root, and entire or more or less toothed about the 

 middle, never near the apex, gradually narrowing as they ascend and becoming 

 less hairy, the highest sometimes quite glabrous and shining excepting the mar- 

 pinal fringe, very narrow, linear and acute. Flowers small, white, in constantly 

 elongating racemes ; pedicels shorter the calyx, patent and glabrous. Sepals 

 erect, purplish green, their margins white, bluntish, the 2 alternate ones oblong, 

 a little gibbous at the base, the other 2 narrower. Petals linear-oblong or. obovate- 

 oblong, tapering into the claw, considerably exceeding the calyx, spreading, entire 

 or obsoletely emarginate. Stamens erect, longer than the gerraen. Hypogynous 

 glands green, 6, one surrounding each of the two shorter filaments and bilobate, 

 another much smaller and roundish, one behind each of the longer stamens. 

 Gei-men iexeie, subcompressed. Style obsolete; s(i^?(ia round, flat, glanduloso- 

 pilose. Siliqucs linear, very erect, 1 — 1-j inch in length, by about ^ a line in 

 breadth, compressed, beaded by the projection of the seeds within, shining, 

 wrinkled and glabrous, with a more or less distinct ridge or keel along the centre 

 of each valve, crowned with the stigma. Seeds numerous, uniserial, oblong-ellip- 

 tical or subquadrangular, flattened mostly on the outer side, the inner a little con- 

 vex, reddish brown, with a darker narrow margin which is often a little expanded 

 at the lower extremity of the seed, punctate-scabrous, as broad as the dissepiment. 



Yl. Cardamine, Linn. Bitter-cress. 



" Pod linear, the valves flat, generally seiDarating elasticalljs 

 nerveless. Seed-stalks slender." — Br. Fl. 



1. C. pratensis, L. Common Bitter- cress. Ladies' -smock. 

 Cuckoo- flower . " Leaves pinnate, radical leaflets rottndish dentate, 

 canline ones lanceolate nearly entire, style straight, stigma capi- 

 tate, petals obovate." — Br. Fl. p. 26. E. B. t. 776. 



In moist woods and meadows, abundantly, i^/. April— June. 2^. 



" Stem 1 — 2 feet high. Floiuers large, blush-coloured." — Br. Fl. 



A variety with unusually large flowers I find in Howingford withy-bed at its 

 northern end, in very boggy ground. 



I found. May 28, 184.5, in a moory meadow by the Medina, below Rookley, a 

 solitary specimen of C. pvatensis, affording a singular instance of abnormal deve- 

 lopment. On the lower part of the corymb were several seed-vessels on pedicels 

 changed from their usual linear to an ovate-elliptical figure, so as to resemble the 

 short fruit of plants belonging to the siliculose section of this order. These on 

 being opened were found to contain petals of the usual colour, which in the pods 

 above had burst from their confinement, and appeared as semidouble flowers the 

 valves of the pod answering to the true calyx. At the summit of the stem the 



