BRIGGS : BOTANY OF PLYM VALLEY. 



91 



some garden. Another sand-bank near, yields Mentha pij>erita, ^ of Smith ; 

 vulgaris, Sole, t. 8. About a mile beyond Plym Bridge are extensive slate 

 quarries on both sides of the river, named respectively Rumple and Cann, 

 and on the rubble thrown out from them the botanist will meet with some 

 of the botanical treasures of the valley. In some places here the rare Mossy 

 Tillsea, Tillma muscosa, L, abounds, giving in May and June a red tinge to 

 the most arid spots, and should the summer be wet, continuing to flourish 

 for some time but disappearing before autumn when hundreds of young 

 seedling plants may be found springing up, the most luxuriant of which 

 produce a few flowers the same year^ but do not attain their full size and 

 development until the succeeding spring. Spear-leaved Willow-herb, Epilo- 

 hium lancGolatum, S. & M., delights in this slaty soil, and grows abun- 

 dantly in it, intermixed mth three other species of the same genus, 



1 7nontanum, ohseurum, and parvifloruin. Here I have once or twice found 

 dubious plants — hybrids apparently between some two or three of these 

 species ; one of which I have now in my herbarium, seemingly the produce 

 of £J. mo7itanum and lanceolaturrL Near a cottage close to Cann Quarry, 

 Dwarf Elder, Samhuciis Ebulus, L., occurs, but perhaps only as a naturalized 



' species, as the proximity of its habitat to the cottage is suspicious, and the 



' plant, so far as I am aware, grows nowhere else near Plymouth. Other 

 not very common plants to be found above the quarries are Barharea prcecox, 

 Teesdalia nudicaulis, Sagina ciliata, Sagina subulata and Trigonella ornithopo- 



. dioides. Eabbits seem to consider the last choice food, for they had so 

 nibbled off its tender leaves last spring that I was not able to secure a perfect 

 specimen here. Common Wood, notwithstanding its name a now only par- 

 tially wooded tract, lying between Rumple Quarry and Bickleigh Vale, 



* produces many botanical rarities, among them Waved-leaved S. John's Wort 

 Hypericum undulatum, Schousb., which abounds in a marshy valley here, and 

 occurs also in damp spots, associated with the Marsh Violet, Viola palustris, 

 L., Bog, S. John's Wort, Hypericum Modes, L. Marsh Willow-herb, Epilohium 

 palustre, White-rot, Hydrocotyle vulgaris, L., Ivy-leaved Campanula, Wahlen- 

 hergia hederacea, Eeich., Moneywort, Sihthorpia europcea, L., Bog Pimpernel 

 Anagallis tenella, L., Lesser Skull-cap^ Scutellaria minor, L,, Bog Asphodel, 

 Nartliecium ossifragum, Huds., and Flowering Fern, Osmunda regalis, L., 

 A rocky hill-side here produces the Sweet Mountain Fern, Lastrea Oreopteris, 

 Presl., and the Recurved Prickly-toothed Fern, Lastrea foenisecii, Wats., 

 whilst a low wall by the side of the tram-road, formed for bringing the 

 granite in from Dartmoor, furnishes a habitat for the Scaly Spleenwort, 



