128 LEGUWINOS.B. [J'icii). 



*** Flowers axillary, solitary or in pairs, nearly sessile. 



4. V. sativa, L. Common or cultivated Vetch. Flowers 1 — 2 

 axillary nearly sessile, leaflets 6 — 10 lower ones retuse or obcor- 

 date upper ones often narrower or linear, stipules toothed with a 

 more or less evident spot, calyx-teeth lanceolate- subulate, stan- 

 dard glabrous, legumes linear x^ubescent or rarely glabrous, seeds 

 globose smooth, a. sativa ; upper leaflets elliptic-oblong, flowers 

 usually in pairs, pods erect. E. B. t. 834. ^. anfjustifolia ; 

 upper leaflets narrower, flowers usually solitary, pods spreading. 

 v. angustifolia. Roth : E. B. Sufppl. t. 2614. V. Bobartii, Forst. : 

 E. B. Suppl. t. 2708. Br. Fl. p. 109. 



In dry gravelly or sandy pastures, waste and cultivated g:round, on banks, along 

 hedaes, roadsides, and in woods and bushy places. Fl. May, June. 0. (or $. 

 Hook.) 



E. Med. — Abundant in Sandown bay, on the debris at the foot of the cliffs, 

 which it adorns with its rich purple flowers, varying occasionally to bluish or 

 white. Of very diminutive size on the dry sandy turf of St. Helen's spit, Ike, 

 ■where it is likely to be mistaken for V. latbyroides, a species apparently of great 

 rarity with us. Along the Brading road from Ryde beyond Whitefield Wood. 



0. On a bank at Ventnor. On the short pasture-ground at St. Helen's spit, 

 sparingly. 



Legumes a little silky or (when old) nearly glabrou.", reticulated, more or less 

 erect or spreading, brownish black, linear, subcyliudrical, with narrow keel-like 

 sutures, slightly bent like the long/, curved upwards at the extremity into a sharp 

 hard and reflexed point. Seeds horn about 8 to 10 or 12, globose or obsoletely 

 angular, mottled or clouded grayish and brown with blackish spots, quite smooth 

 and glabrous ; hilum linear, about i the circumference of the seed in length. 



Our Ventnor specimens are certainly the V. angustifolia of Hooker's Br. Flora, 

 who very properly unites the plant figured by him in ' English Botany,' t. 2614, 

 with the V. Bobartii of Forster, represented at t. 2708 of the same work, under 

 one denomination, and considers them with equal justice merely as varieties of V. 

 sativa. Our examples agree well with Smith's description of V. angustifolia in 

 the last ed. of his Engl. Flora, and with Sir W. Hooker's figure just referred to, 

 excepting that the leaflets of our specimens are more obtuse. We liud the upper- 

 most flowers occasionally in pairs, as there represented, all the rest ndlitnry : we 

 cannot therefore understand the propriety of Mr. Forster's correction of the spe- 

 cific character of V. angustifolia, when, referring to the very plate which shows 

 the flowers solitary, he adds, " Flowers in pairs, nearly sessile." Mr. Forster 

 expresses a doubt of his own V. Sobartii being a good species in Lin. Trans, 

 xvi., and we have just seen that the only mark to distinguish it from V. angusti- 

 folia is very variable. 



1 have found about Kyde a Vicia having solitary flowers, yet with a dark impres- 

 sed spot on the stipules, and all the other characters of V. saliva. 



.5. V. lathyroicles, L. Sjiring Vetch. " Flowers sessile solitary, 

 leaflets 2 — 6 lower ones retuse, stipules entire not impressed with 

 a spot, calyx-teeth subulate, standard glabrous, legumes linear 

 glabrous, seeds nearly cubical tubercled." — Br. Fl. p. 108. E. B. 

 t. .SO. 



On dry sandy or gravelly banks and pastures, perhaps not rare, though appear- 

 ing so from its small size and resemblance to the last. Fl. April — June. 0. 



E. il/ff/.— Banks in Sandown bay. Dr. Martin, 1839!!! 



Root annual, branched, whitish, small, slender and fibrous, having usually 



