Cotyledon.] cbassulace^. 187 



On moist shaded walls, rocks, fences and stony hedgebanks ; very rare. Fl. 

 June — August. !(.. 



E. Med. — Found in 1839 by my friend G. Kirkpatrick, Esq., covering about a 

 foot square of a low stone fence at Bohemia, growing in light friable soil, and 

 scarcely 3 inches high !!! In April, 1843, the same gentleman and myself 

 observed it in great abundance about the same spot, and particularly on hedge- 

 banks along the cross-road from Bohemia to Bleak Down and the Star Inn, scat- 

 tered over the fences for a considerable distance from the former place. Near 

 Lake, Miss Lucas. [On both sides of the road near Kennerly, in great abun- 

 dance. Dr. Bell-Salter, Edrs.] 



W.Med. — [Near Kingstone, on the heathy ground both sides of the road 

 towards Bleak Down, £>r. Bell-Salter, Edrs.] 



A very smooth, glabrous, pale and succulent plant. Root a roundish, white and 

 fleshy tuber, hirsute with innumerable brownish, woolly and slender fibres. Stem 

 from 2 or 3 inches to 1 or 2 feet or even more in height,* erect or ascending, soli- 

 tary or several, simple or branched alternately, round, solid, a little leafy, often 

 dashed or streaked with purple or wholly of that colour below. Leaves alternate, 

 brij-hl green or sometimes reddish, fleshy and somewhat shining, a little glaucous 

 underneath, obscurely veined, on round very brittle-stalks, of considerable though 

 variable length ; the radical ones numerous, crowded, orbicular and peltate, 

 deeply cupped or concave, with an umbilical depression in the centre correspond- 

 ing to tlie axis of the petiole, unequally and mostly obtusely crenate, notched and 

 sublobate. Flowers very numerous, in long, erect, terminal and axillary, simple 

 and leafless, spicate racemes, secund, lax or drooping. Pedicels terete, shorter 

 than the flowers, each subtended by a linear-lanceolate fleshy hract longer than 

 the pedicel, and of which those at the lower part of the raceme gradually become 

 broader, more or less toothed and fiinally leafy. Calyx about J the length of the 

 corolla ; sepals lanceolate, acute, close-pressed against the latter. Corolla pale 

 greenish or sometimes reddish, tubuloso-campanulate, subcylindrical, obscurely 5- 

 angled, scarcely \ an inch in length ; the mouth greener, in 5 short, broadly ovate 

 or roundish, overlapping, suddenly acuminate segments, their tips a little spread- 

 ing. Stamens really inserted at the base of the corolla, their filaments adnate and 

 incorporated with its cellular tissue for the greater part of their length, the free 

 portion of each emerging a short distance below the segments, the 5 opposite to 

 the latter rather longer than the rest ;-\- anthers yellowish, nearly orbicular, i/y- 

 pogynous scales 6, erect, brownish yellow, oblung, a little contracted and emar- 

 ginately 2-lobed at the summit, thin, flat and nectariferous. Germens linear, 

 erect, obliquely tapering into their short obtuse styles, that are slightly flattened 

 and glandulose just below their somewhat recurved summits. Seeds very minute 

 and numerous, elliptical-oblong, pale brown, appearing as if covered with a thin 

 wrinkled pellicle. 



The expressed juice of the Wall Pennywort, administered in the quantity of 

 two tablespoon fuls twice or thrice a day, or in the form of an extract, has been 

 brought into notice as a remedy for epilepsy by my friend Thos. Salter, Esq., of 

 Poole, in the ' London Medical Gazette ' for March 2nd, 1849. None of the 

 old authors whom I have consulted ascribe any efficacy in this complaint to the 

 Cotyledon, the use of which was first communicated to the public in an old num- 

 ber of a magazine, and said to be the contribution of the celebrated John Wesley. 



* In the comparatively dry climate of the Isle of Wight the plant is of much 

 humbler growth in general than in the more humid western counties of England, 

 and in Scotland or Ireland ; some of my specimens however, collected in the pre- 

 sent very moist season of 1843, equal in luxuriance any I have seen elsewhere. 



f The adnate part of their filairients, more prominent than that of the other 

 five, showing I suppose that they belong to an interior series or verticil. 



