498 



THE COMPOSITE FAMILY. 



glandular hairs, intermixed with a shorter, rusty-coloured down, 

 whilst the stem is glabrous, or bears in the lower part long, white, 

 woolly hairs, which are sometimes very dense close to the stock. 

 Scales of the involucres narrow, the inner ones nearly equal, the outer 

 few and much shorter. 



On banks and old walls, in meadows and rich pastures, bushy places 

 and open woods, throughout Europe and Russian Asia, from the Me- 

 diterranean to the Arctic regions. Very common all over Britain. Fl. 

 all summer and early autumn. Exceedingly variable in the shape and 

 teeth of the leaves, in colour and hairiness, in the number of stem- 

 leaves and of flower-heads. In alpine situations the leaves are usually 

 much more entire, often obovate. A marked variety, growing in woods 

 and on banks, with a much more leafy stem, has long been distinguished 

 under the names of H. sylvaticum (Eng. Bot. t. 2031) or H. vulgatum, 

 but it is everywhere connected with the more typical form by a series 

 of intermediates which defy classification. From the Savoy IT. and 

 the umbellate H. it may be known by the radical leaves larger than 

 the stem ones, and persistent at the time of flowering, except where 

 they have been accidentally choked by the surrounding herbage, or 

 withered by drought or other accidental causes. 



4. Honey wort Hawkweed. Hieraeium cerinthoides, 



Linn. (Fig. 597.) 

 (Eng. Bot. t. 2378, from a garden specimen.) 



The habit and radical leaves are those 

 of the mountain varieties of the wall H., 

 but the whole plant is still more glaucous, 

 and has generally more of the woolly 

 hairs, especially about the stock. The 

 flower-stems bear but few rather large 

 flowers, and 1 or 2 leaves usually entire, 

 and always clasping the stem with 

 broad, rounded auricles, and the radical 

 leaves are usually remarkably obovate. 



In western Europe, chiefly in the 

 Pyrenees, more doubtfully extending to 

 the western Alps and Corsica. A very 

 doubtful British plant. The only speci- 

 mens I have seen which really resemble 

 the Pyrenean ones (in the dried state at 

 least) are from the mountains of the 

 west and north of Ireland. The Scotch 

 and English and most of the Irish ones 

 so denominated are usually varieties of 

 the wall H. or of the Savoy H. 



Fig. 597. 



