Rtibia ] RUBiACEiE. 237 



Cowes, where my friend Mrs. Ooodwin tells me it is called Evergreen Oliver by 

 the coiintiy people. Like a thick matting on the hedges along the road ahoul a 

 mile from Yaimoulh towards Shalfleet. 



A beautiful evevgreen plant. Root slender. Stem solitary, perennial and 

 woody, terete, chordiform, and according to situation short, reclining and procum- 

 bent, or scandent over bushes and trees to the length of several feet,* about the 

 thickness of a quill at base, quite or nearly simple below, leafless, very tongh and 

 flexile, covered with an ash-coloured cuticle, which when old peels off in fine 

 paper-like laminae ; alternately branched above, the branches green, acutely quad- 

 rangular, with a tough medullary chord in the centre, probably biennial or perish- 

 ing after having once flowered, certainly more than annual, their very salient 

 angles rough with short cartilaginous points or prickles directed downwards. 

 Leaves in whorls of 4, 5, or 6 (commonly 4 or 5), mostly reduced to a pair or 3 

 beneath and amongst the flowering ends of the branches, sessile, deep green and 

 persistent, the young shoois reddish brown and lucid, extremely firm and rigid, 

 quite glabrous, their slightly deflexed margins and prominent midrib beneath 

 beset with short, curved, cartilaginous prickles pointing downwards and a little 

 backwards, those on the midrib fewer or even wanting: in shape and size the 

 leaves vary infinitely, from lanceolate or elliptic-lanceolate to broadly elliptical, 

 ovato-elliptical, ovate or even obovate, the smaller usually the broadest, rounded 

 or obtuse, with a small mucro, the larger acute or pointed but not acuminate. 

 Flowers in axillary and terminal di-tiichotomously forked clusters, forming a 

 compound leafy panicle. Pedicels unequal, scabrous, divaricate, spreading or 

 deflexed, usually with one or two small lanceolate bracts at their base. Calyx 

 obsolete. Corolla about 2^ lines in diameter, yellowish green, rotate, without 

 any tube, very deeply 6-cleft (with a 6-cleft flower occasionally interspersed), the 

 segments spreading, a little unequal, ovate or ovato-elliptical, their margins 

 deflexed, abruptly taper-pointed, besprinkled above with pale papillose points or 

 granulations. Stamens very short, erect, inserted about midway betwixt the 

 throat of the corolla and the base of its segments ; anthers innate, pale yellow, of 

 a somewhat rectangular, obloi]g, square figure, a little decurved or arcuate, plane 

 underneath, convex above ; pollen yellow. Styles 2, short, erect, greenish, sub- 

 globoso-oapilate, surrounded by a tumiil ring or border filling the orifice of the 

 corolla. Ovary subglobose, compressed. Fruit not much larger than a pepper- 

 corn, purplish black, smooth and shining, roundish or (when both seeds are per- 

 fected) subdidymous. Seeds two, or as often only one by abortion, large, subglo- 

 bose, flattened on the inner side, surrounded with a mealy and juicy nearly tasteless 

 pulp, of a purple colour. 



The lower part of the stem partakes of the colouring matter so copious in the 

 root. Might it not be successfully cultivated, and yield as good madder as R. 

 tinctorum F 



The Madders are less hardy than the Bed-straws, and cease far sooner than these 

 latter towards the North. Our native species ranges to somewhat above 63'' in 

 the W. of England, "Vvhich is doubtless the extreme polar limit of the genus in 

 Europe. Though found sparingly in Kent and Sussex, this island appears to be 

 the most eastern limit of its occurrence in abundance even on the S. coast, becom- 

 ing more frequent as we advance towards the West. The stems are certainly 

 perennial, not dying after flowering, but emitting fresh shoots, though it is pro- 

 bable they do not survive beyond the third year. The fruit is comparatively but 

 sparingly matured, by far the greater number of the flowers falling away and 

 leaving only the bare pedicels. 



* I measured a stem from the Priory woods, near Byde, which had ascended 

 the trunk of a tree to the extent of ten feet, and, though the intermediate part 

 appeared quite dead and withered, the summit shot out into a bundle of greeu 

 and vigorous leafy branches. 



