86 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 



Flowers J inch long ; whitish, 

 suffused with purplish brown, 

 ■sometimes fading into bluish 

 grey, but never of the clear tint 

 of type. 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 



Clematis Vitalba at Ledsham— I notice that in the report of the 

 Sherburn meeting of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, in the July (1884) number of 

 the 'Naturalist,' it is stated that ' at Ledsham was found a new station for Clefnatis 

 Vitalba J To prevent possible future misapprehension allow me to say that I have 

 known the station in question for seven years, and was naturally at first inclined to 

 consider that to find Clematis there was a matter worth noting. The wise 

 scepticism of my friend Mr, Arnold Lees kept me back, however, from reporting it, 

 and in the end I traced that the plant was a stray one from the Rectory grounds. 

 A splendid mass of the wild Clematis grows in front of the Rectory : when and 

 whence introduced I do not know. (I have found the same plant similarly cultivated 

 in a garden at Airton.) From this as parent, numberless seedlings have sprung 

 up about the Rectory grounds — some of them approaching the roadside. It is 

 simply one of these stragglers which has been observed and recorded in the 

 notes of the meeting. 



I may add that along a small plantation at the side of the Rectory shrubberies 

 Doronicum pardalianches has been naturalised in great profusion. Many thousands 

 of the bright yellow flowers make the wood gay in summer. Its introduction there 

 seems to be of old date : I could not by any inquiry hear of a time when the plant 

 was unknown. — William Whitwell, Skipton-in-Craven, Sept. 17th, 1884, 



Flora of the English Lake District.— it is somewhat remarkable 

 that for a region so well known and so much visited by tourists a flora has not 

 been written long ago. About 900 species of flowering plants and vascular 

 cryptogams occur amongst the lakes as natives, colonists, or denizens, and at 

 least 100 more have been noticed as casual introductions. In the Lake district 

 four out of the six zones of temperature, into which Watson divides Britain, are 

 -represented. The following table will show how the Lake flora stands as com- 

 pared with that of Britain as a whole, and of the north-eastern counties : — 





Infer 

 Agrarian. 



Mid 

 Agrarian. 



Super 

 Agrarian. 



Infer 

 Arctic. 



Mid 

 Arctic. 



Super 

 Arctic. 



Total. 



Britain 



1,225 



1,070 



760 



293 



244 



Ill 



1,425 



North Yorkshire 





948 





126 







992 



Northumberland & ) 

 Durham j 





920 



418 



108 







935 



Lake District 





859 



301 



125 



28 





893 



Many of the local residents have a belief that the little inn at the top of 

 Kirkstone Pass, to which there is a steep pull-off by the coach road from Amble- 

 side or Bowness, is the highest inhabited house in England. This is quite a 

 delusion, as there are many houses on the Pennine Chain from 300 to 500 feet 

 higher (the Kirkstone Inn is a shade under 500 yards above sea-level), and there 

 is a whole village at the head of Allendale (Coal Clough) that stands at an 

 elevation of from 1,650 to 1,900 feet above sea-level. At the Lakes there is very 

 little cultivation above the Mid-agrarian zone, and much less variety of surface over 

 1,000 feet than in the eastern counties, so that, as the foregoing table shows, the 

 flora is materially smaller. On the mountain summits over 2,700 feet, only 28 



plants are known to occur. — J. Gilbert Baker, Kew, August 12th, 1884. 



Naturalist, 



Flowers f inch long; white, 

 veined with lilac. 



