56 DROSERACE^. [Drosera. 



On spongy and peaty bogs, the wet sides of marsh-drains and ditches, frequent. 

 Fl. July — September. !(.. 



E. Med. — Profusely on Munsley peat-bed. In boggy spots at the western 

 extremity of St. Helen's green. Abundant on the marshy skirts of Lake common 

 abutting on Sandown Level. The Wilderness, and on the northern declivity of 

 Bleak down, also abundantly. On the moors about Rookley and Godshill, plen- 

 tiful. 



Root or rather rhizome* slender, filiform, emitting a few fibres, loosely attached 

 to the soft boggy soil or insinuating themselves amongst the moss. Leaves all 

 springing from the caudex or root-crown, alternate, more or less flatly spreading 

 in a circular form, not very numerous, from about 3 to 5 lines in length and about 

 the same breadth, obovate-orbicular, smooth and shining beneath, with very 

 obscure venation, their somewhat deflexed margins elegantly fringed with spread- 

 ing black or purple oblong glands, on very long tapering and pellucid crimson 

 stalks ;t their entire upper surface beset with similar glands, but more shortly 

 pedicellate as they approach the centre, and erect ; suddenly attenuated at base 

 into pale or bright crimson, subterete, 2-edged petioles varying in length from 

 about 1 to 2 inches, clothed with scattered pellucid hairs above, and furnished at 

 base with an acutely laciniated or jagged membrane, dilating and decurrent into 

 a winged border, and forming a sort of adnate stipules. Scapes 1, 2 or 3, simple, 

 erect, crimson, terete, slender and flexuose, quite glabrous, from 2 or 3 to 8 or 9 

 inches high, always when in flower much exceeding the leaf-stalks in length. 

 Flowers small, white, subsecund, alternate, in a simple or sometimes slightly 

 forked terminal raceme which is circinate in vernation, gradually unfolding as 

 the flowers expand, at last becoming upright and from about 1 — 2^ inches in 

 length. Pedicels much shorter than the flowers, thickened upwards, nearly erect. 

 Bracts solitary, subulate, deciduous, placed on the main stalk of the raceme, 

 either above or below the pedicel, more rarely on the pedicel itself just below the 

 flower, or at its base. Calyx greenish, its segments elliptical-oblong, rounded, 

 ribless, unequally notched, the serratures gland-tipped. Corolla white. Capsules 

 erect. 



Drosera longifolia, L., was observed by Dr. Salter and myself rather plentifully 

 at Gomer pond by Gosport, growing amongst Cladium, 1842. 



Order XI. POLYGALACEJS, Juss. 



" Sepals 5, the two inner generallj'^ large and petaloid. Petals 

 3 — 6, more or less united with the filaments of the stamens, which 

 form two parcels, each with 4 anthers, opening by pores at the 

 apex. Ovary 1, usually 2-celled. Style and stigma 1. Fruit a 

 capsule, or drupaceous, 2- or 1-celled ; dehiscence loculicidal. 

 Seeds solitary, pendulous, often with a caruncle at the base. — 



* The root, which is thought by Decaisne to be parasitic on the moss or Sphag- 

 num upon which it grows, is given by DeCandoUe as annual, which it must be 

 confessed it has greatly the appearance of being ; and the dried leaves always 

 seen below the crown may be merely the earliest ones of the current year, as 

 young leaves keep constantly arising during the flowering of the plant. 



f The glands of the leaves during warm days secrete a globule of clear viscid 

 fluid, like dewdrops, whence their name, and with their stalks betray a degree of 

 irritability, curving eventually over the flies and other small insects which may 

 generally be found ensnared by their clammy exudation, but never, so far as I 

 could observe, assisting primarily in their capture by any sudden contraction as 

 in Dionma muscipula. 



