CLXX.— THE MARSH ST. JOHN’S-WORT. 
Hypericum el odes Linne. 
I F we were inclined to write of Tutsan under Allioni’s name of Androscemum 
officinale, we are still more predisposed to use Spach’s Elodes palustris for the 
Marsh St. John’s-wort. It is distinguished from other species of the genus 
Hypericum by many marked characters. Its succulence and downiness may well be 
considered as merely adaptive in accordance with the conditions under which it 
lives ; but within the compass of the flower there are various characters that cannot 
be so described. The persisting petals are symmetrical : the three stamens have 
each five branches : alternating with them are small two-cleft glands pressed against 
the under side of the ovary and apparently secreting honey ; and the ovary is one- 
chambered, with three prominent parietal placentas projecting far into the ovarian 
cavity but without meeting in the centre, and with three styles. Nevertheless, as 
we explained when speaking of the Tutsan, we follow the usual English practice of 
considering that the general uniformity of characters justifies us in retaining the 
comprehensive genus Hypericum in its Linnaean sense and thus speaking of this 
species as Hypericum elodes Linne. 
It is noticeable that the distribution of the species, both generally and within 
the British Isles, is exceptionally limited. It is essentially a western type, repre- 
sented in Liguria and Switzerland, only in the north of Portugal and Spain, in the 
Azores, in France, Belgium, Holland, and only the north-west of Germany. It 
occurs in the Channel Islands, throughout Ireland (where suitable habitats 
for it abound), in Wales, but mainly in the south and west of England and in 
the west of Scotland. 
In contrast with the stiff, slender, wiry, smooth, red-tinged stem of the Upright 
St. John’s-wort ( H . pulchrum Linne), which inhabits dry heathy situations, this marsh 
species has soft, succulent, hairy, pale green stems of much more considerable 
diameter in proportion to their height. Growing in spongy bogs, and often actually 
in the shallow water at the margin of marsh pools, its stems are prostrate below, 
branching freely at first and producing adventitious roots from their nodes, then 
bending upward into an erect position and from three to eight inches high. The 
ascending branches may be round or slightly angular in section. The rounded 
leaves are sessile and sometimes heart-shaped at the base, not more than an inch 
long, with minute pellucid glands, and covered, like the stem, with a soft shaggy 
down of long simple, colourless hairs. This long-haired tomentum, so common on 
water-side plants, liable as they are to frequent wetting and occasional submergence, 
may be an adaptation to prevent, at least in the first case, the clogging of the 
stomata by water ; but the situations in which the plant grows, associated, as it often 
is, with the Bog-Mosses and the Sundews, suggest that its soil-water may often be 
acid, so that the soft, thin-walled cellular tissue of the stem may be a true water 
