98 



Druce : The Oxford British Plant List. 



Mr. Lester-Garland long ago pointed out in ' Rep. of Exch. 

 Club,' the character [which Babington] relied on to separate it 

 from 0. purpurea was valueless. I think Babington 's plant may 

 be the Spitzelii of my list, but as yet, I have not been able to 

 see Babington 's type. The ' arenaria ' of a good British botanist 

 from Guernsey is 0. amethystea. In this genus we have plenty 

 which appear to be in a state of flux, and really definite char- 

 acters are difficult to find, which are constant. In some in- 

 stances, it may be the host has a modifying influence on its 

 unwelcome guest, or it may, as in the Hieracia, Koeleria, 

 Taraxacum, etc., species are in ' the making,' and not yet firmly 

 fixed. My var. alpicola Reichb was so large a flowered form of 

 Pingiiicula vulgaris that Boswell Syme at first was inclined to 

 refer it to grandifiora. It occurred in Western Ross. 



Poa cenisia All. b. fiexuosa (Wahl.) given in ' Lond. Cat.', 

 should be deleted. Hackel at first referred the plant I gathered 

 on Ben Lawer to cenisia, but on my obtaining more examples 

 he, and I have no doubt correctly, said No. I published the 

 correction in the ' Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist.' It is true Mr. Fisher 

 said he thought the specimens were a new form of P. arctica, 

 and he promised to go into the matter, but beyond losing my 

 type specimen, I have heard nothing more from him about it, 

 and his opinion cannot override that of the great systematist. 

 There is little doubt that the plants were an extreme alpine form 

 of Poa pratensis, with large flowers. Hackel himself named 

 my specimen of Festuca dumetorum L., closely allied, as Dr. 

 Lees says, to F. rubra L. 



The fern Botrychium lanceolatum , rests on very slender 

 evidence. It was supposed to have been found on the sands of 

 Barrie, in 1839, by a Mr. Cruickshank, who sent a drawing of 

 it to Newman (see ' Brit. Ferns,' Ed. III., p. 32), who referred 

 it to B. rutaceum. No one has refound it, nor do the specimens 

 of Cruickshank appear to be in existence (' E. B.', XII., p. 29). 

 Perhaps I ought to have put it in my list in brackets, but the 

 same might be said of Ranunculus gramineus, R. alpestris, 

 Car ex hrizoides, etc., but space had to be considered. 



I hope, at no distant date, to deal with the reported plants 

 of Britain, which have not been verified, so that a list of them 

 with the evidence on which they have been reported, may be 

 available for consultation. I should much like to see the York- 

 shire Inula hritannica L. I have the species from Groby 

 Pool, Leicester, and have gathered it in Austria, etc. It is 



Naturalist, 



