By M. De Candolle. 



5 



and especially about Dover,* where it was noticed by Ray ;-f 

 and grows abundantly together with Cheiranthux Che'mX (wild 

 Wall Flower,) on the chalky rocks of that shore. Both these 

 plants are in blossom in the month of May, and are distin- 

 guished from each other by their different tints, the flowers 

 of the Wild Cabbage being extremely pale, and those of the 

 Wall Flower a deep yellow ; the stalk of the Wild Cabbage 

 is crooked, half ligneous, branching, and seemingly perennial, 

 though it most probably runs to seed at the end of two, 

 three, or four years, and then dies ; it is from three to four 

 inches in diameter ; the young branches are green, herba- 

 ceous, and cylindrical. From the remarkable thickness of the 

 parent stalk, compared with its height, and with the second- 

 ary branches, we can easily account for the thick and fleshy 

 stalk of some of its varieties, such as the Chou-rave. The 

 leaves which shoot from the summit of the sterile branches 

 form a kind of rose, giving to the wild plant the intermediate 

 aspect between the two grand races, the Round-headed 

 Cabbage, and the Cavalier or Tall Cabbage, so that one may 

 easily conceive it to have degenerated to both of these. 

 When its natural tendency to form a rose has been gradu- 

 ally decreasing, or, in other words, when the stalk or branches 

 have had a greater tendency to shoot than the leaves, it has 

 produced the race of Cavalier Cabbages ; when, on the con- 

 trary, the disposition of growing to a rose lias been gaining 



* Gerard also found it in the county of Kent, on the shores between Whitstable, 

 and the Isle of Thanet. See Johnson's Gerard, page 316. See. 

 f Raii Synopsis Stirp. Brit. edit. 3. Vol. ii. page 293. 



\ Cheiranthus fruticulosus. Smith's Flora Brit. Vol. ii. page 709. Eng. Bot. 

 plate 1934. 



