404 PRiMULACE^. [Anagallis. 



the top of Dover street, Ryde, Miss Lucas !!! In a field by Shanklin, on the 

 footroad from thence to Luooombe, Miss KirJcpatrich. .'!! Near Barnsley farm, 

 Dr. Bell-Saker .'.' Under the cliff a little way from the chine, Shanklin, 1 842. 



[S. Tyne hall, Bembridge, Miss More. — Edrs.] 



Herb quite glabrous and somewhat succulent. Root pale reddish, with copious 

 tufted filires. Stems numerous, spreading and procumbent, from a span to up- 

 wards of 2 feet in length at the close of summer, quadrangular, the angles slightly 

 winged and often twisted, partially streaked with brownish red, solid and brittle. 

 Leaves opposite or 3 together, quite sessile, dark green and somewhat fleshy, ovale 

 or uvato-lanceolate. Peduncles solitary, axillary, single-flowered, as long as or 

 longer than the leaves, subcylindrical, strongly recurved in seed. Flowers rather 

 pale scarlet, with a purple eye, fully expanding only in dry sunny weather, and 

 closing entirely before rain. Capsules thin, pale brown, the size of peppercorns, 

 perfectly spherical and glabrous, marked with several slender longitudinal ribs 

 and the single transverse line of dehiscence, tipped with the permanent style. 

 Seeds numerous, brown, almost hemispherical, covered with a membranous tissue 

 of cells ;* their convex part immersed in the deeply alveolate globose receptacle. 



In my Isle-of-Wight specimens of /3. the stems are equally procumbent, and 

 the whole plant, with the exception of its rather smaller and differently coloured 

 flowers, in all points exactly similar to'the common scarlet form amongst which it 

 was growing. In both, the edges of the petals are finely fringed and minutely 

 notched, and that in an equal degree. The leaves of the blue Pimpernel are 

 often lanceolate, as I have gathered it near Cobham in Kent, but this character is 

 inconstant, the leaves in the specimens from near Ryde being as broadly ovate as 

 in the usual or normal state of the plant. Mr. Leighton has remarked the same of 

 this variety in Shropshire. In the white or pale-rose variety, y., the corolla is 

 also smaller than usual, and about the same size as in /3. ; in other respects it 

 does not differ from a. 



The absolute specific identity of the forms of A. arvensis just described 

 has been established beyond all controversy by Professor Henslow (see Loudon's 

 Mag. Nat. Hist. iii. p. 537). I have myself seen the cultivated Anagallis in the 

 garden of the Rev. — Sherson, of Yaverland, bearing flowers of a bright blue on 

 the same stem with the flesh-colonred variety, of which there was an entire bed. 



The flowers of this plant often undergo, at the close of autumn or in wet sea- 

 sons, from deficiency of light and heat, a remarkable transformation, the corolla 

 becoming cleft to the very base or pentapetalous ; the segments rounded, much 

 shorter than the calyx, and wholly green or partially coloured ; the stamens 

 smooth. Sometimes the calyx is converted into a leafy whorl ; the capsule be- 

 comes 5-angled, or is itself turned into a bundle of leaves. All these changes I 

 have remarked in the wet autumn of 1841, on specimens from fields above San- 

 down bay. They are also noticed by Gaudin, in his Fl. Helv. ii. p. 67 (ad cal- 

 cem.), who observes that the seeds of the common scarlet Anagallis are fatal to 

 small birds, which eat those of the blue variety (kept by him distinct) with impu- 

 nity. 



2. A. tenella, L. Bog Pimpernel. " Stem creeping filiform, 

 leaves opposite ovate or roundish stalked, peduncles longer than 

 the leaves, calyx 4 times shorter than the broadly and widely 

 funnel-shaped corolla."— Br. Fl. p. 333. E. B. t. 530. 



In boggy, springy, spongy ground, in peat-holes, on slipped land, and in wet 

 woods; very frequent, i^^. July- — August. 2(. 



E. Med. — Near Ninhani farm, and in a field near Weeks'.s, Ryde. Abundant 

 near Niton, especially between Knowle and the Sandrock spring, fringing the 



* In the green state the seeds are covered with roundish vesicular prominences, 

 that on ripening burst, leaving a membranous or chaffy pellicle, in the form of an 

 irregular network. 



