THE SEA HOLLY— continued. 
trilobed with cartilaginous wavy and spinous margins, reaching from two to five 
inches in diameter ; while the cauline ones are amplexicaul, or have a basal sheath ; 
and three, reduced in size and sessile, form the involucre. Obviously this chevaux- 
de-frise of spinous points, turning in all directions, is an effective protection against 
any browsing animal. 
The almost sessile flowers are individually only about an eighth of an inch in 
diameter. Between the bases of their petals and stamens is a ten-pointed honey- 
secreting disk, and this is arched over and protected from rain and the more minute 
insects by the incurved tips of the petals and the filaments of the stamens. The 
tips of the obovate petals are folded in to a distance nearly half the length of the 
petal. This protection can, however, be readily pushed to one side by the proboscis 
of one of the larger insects. The flowers are protandrous, and it requires a 
proboscis four millimetres in length to reach the honey, so that pollination is 
probably mainly effected by the smaller bees and wasps as it has been found to be in 
the case of the allied E. campestre Linne. Possibly the thickly imbricate, chaffy- 
scales that cover the ovary and persist in the fruit stage may be some protection 
against honey-thieves. 
The inland species, E. campestre Linne, is much less glaucous ; in fact, it may 
generally be termed pale green. It is a more slender, more erect, more branched, 
and less succulent plant, and is exceptional in having its leaves pinnately divided. 
The flowers are white or pale blue. It occurs in waste-places and by road-sides 
throughout most of Europe ; but not in northern Russia, Scandinavia, Denmark, 
Scotland, or Ireland. It is fairly abundant in northern France, where it is known as 
Chardon Roland ; and we have noticed the graceful outline of its foliage introduced 
into the Renaissance stonework of Norman churches in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of which the plant was still growing. There is nothing, therefore, inherently 
improbable in the species being truly wild in England, though it is of rare 
occurrence. It is sufficiently striking to attract attention ; but it is, perhaps, only 
in Northamptonshire that it has done so sufficiently to acquire popular names. 
There it has been known as Watling-street Thistle , as Hundred-headed Thistle, and 
as Daneweed. It was, however, at Plymouth that it was first recorded as a 
British plant, Ray noticing it there in 1662 ; and it was still growing in the 
same station in 1880. 
Several beautiful exotic species are cultivated in our gardens, such as E. alpinum 
Linne, E. amethystinum Linne (a native of Dalmatia), E. Bourgati Gouan (the Chardon 
bleu of the Pyrenees), E. planum Linn£ (from Central Europe), E. corniculatum Linne 
(from the Iberian peninsula), and E. pandanifolium Chamisso and Schlechtendal (a 
gigantic species from Uruguay). All of these thrive in a light, well-drained, sandy 
loam. 
