Cerastium.] caryophyllace*. 73 



In waste ground, on wall-tops and other dry sandy places. Fl. March — May. 

 0- 



Plentiful on the Dover, Byde. 



0. Ahundant on the sandy fence of the garden behind the ferry-house, St. 

 Helen's spit. 



A smaller plant than C. triviale, if it he really distinct from that species, and 

 flowering earlier. Root annual, whitish, slender and fibrous. Stem very variable 

 in length, usually but a few inches high, branching from the base dichotomously 

 (or simple, Sm.) in all my specimens, spreading or procumbent, at length erect 

 (Leight.), purplish, clothed in different degrees with spreading, viscid, partly 

 gland-tipped hairs, the latter most numerous on the flower-stalks. Leaves of a 

 paler green than in C. triviale, otherwise similar, very hairy, the lower mostly 

 smoother and a little shining, spathulate, the upper ovate or oblong. Flowers in 

 small terminal panicles that are more or less branched (in the specimens I am 

 describing, which 1 take to be the C. pumilum of Curtis with larger flowers and 

 more deeply cloven petals, much less so than that figured in E. B.), partly pedun- 

 culate, partly sessile or nearly so, their peduncles very various in length, elongat- 

 ing during inflorescence. Bracts in all my specimens of j3. destitute of a scaricse 

 border, in y., which I look upon as the C. semidecandrnm of Smith and ' English 

 Botany,' thinner, with broad very shining edges, of a silvery whiteness, very acute 

 and jagged. Sepals in 0. but little exceeding the petals, sometimes about equal 

 to them ; in y. much longer than these, with far more acuminate tips and broader, 

 somewhat jagged. Petals mostly 5, not unfrequently but 4, and in that case 

 either tstrandrous with 4 styles, or pentandrous with the same number of styles in 

 j3., but little shorter than the calyx or equal to it, and deeply notched or cleft 

 about i of their entire length ; in y. much shorter than the sepals, nairower, 

 greenish white and simply notched, or irregularly jagged here and there, but not 

 cleft. 



A most variable and perplexing plant, on the different forms of which bota- 

 nists have wasted much time and ingenuity by endeavouring to find permanent 

 marks of distinction where none exist. We need but peruse and compare the 

 descriptions and figures of those who have laboured the most to elucidate our 

 common Cerastia, to be convinced that not one has seized upon any absolutely 

 fixed mark of distinction between V. triviale, C. semidecandrum and C tetran- 

 drum ; the very multiplicity of their synonyms and the elaborate commentary of 

 Fries (Nov. Fl. Suec), who has augmented the difliculty of their study still fur- 

 ther by increasing the number of species, prove how little writers have advanced 

 in assigning to each its proper limits. 



Sir J. Smith remarks that C. semidecandrum displays itself in early spring on 

 every wall-top, and withers away long before C. triviale begins to put forth its far 

 less conspicuous blossoms. At Eyde, however (at least in the extraordinary back- 

 ward season of 1837), these two species, with C. tetrandrum, were all in flower 

 together, when I remarked the little tetrandrous plant was earlier out of flower 

 than the larger semidecandrous one, and both considerably in advance of C. tri- 

 viale in respect to the time of seeding. 



I find specimens possessing the characters of C. semidecandrum with 4-clelt 

 calyx and corolla, yet with 6 or 7 stamens in each flower. 



4. C. tetrandrum, Curt. Four -cleft Mouse-ear Chickweed. 

 " Leaves ovate or oblong, stem hairy and somewhat viscid dicho- 

 tomous with flowers in the forks, the whole a leafy cyme, lower 

 bracteas herbaceous some of the uppermost and the sepals with a 

 narrow membranaceous margin, calyx rather longer than the 

 petals 1^—4 times shorter than the pedicels, fruit usually the 

 length of the calyx rarely a little longer." — Br. Fl. p. 71. C. 

 atrovirens, Bab. G. pedunculatum, Bab. Sagina cerastoides, 

 E. B. t. 166. 



