THE DWARF SEA LAVENDER— continued. 
and results in a flat row of flowers with their bracts in reversed order all on the 
outside or end of the row. These bracts are often brightly coloured. 
Six species of Limonium are now recognised as British, all coast plants, though 
.two (L. binervosum C. E. Salmon and L. recurvum C. E. Salmon) frequent more rocky 
shores than do the others. The Common Sea Lavender (L. vulgare Miller) and 
L. humile Miller often occur together, as they do on the mud-banks of the Yar near 
Freshwater, where Mrs. Perrin’s example was collected. Both species have stalked, 
pointed leaves, with one prominent midrib and pinnate secondary veins : both have 
from one to three flowers in each ultimate cymose cluster ; and in both there are 
teeth between the lobes of the calyx. Limonium vulgare is corymbose, its flowering 
branches rise to one level, its cymes are densely grouped together and are often 
recurved, and the outer bracts are rounded at the back ; whilst L. humile differs 
in each of these points, not being corymbose, having its cymes lax and erect or 
incurved, rather than recurved, and the outer bracts keeled. 
It is pleasant to trace the workings of an acute mind ; and it was while examining 
the Sea Lavenders in the herbarium of Samuel Dale, the friend and executor of Ray, 
that the present writer first recognised the great critical acumen of that botanist. 
In several instances specimens of what we now recognise as “ critical ” forms were 
placed in separate sheets of paper, even though the collector was unable to hazard a 
name ; while at other times elaborate labels bore witness to the most careful 
scrutiny of all available synonymy. Dale it was who, in 1700, first recognised 
Limonium humile as a British plant. 
“I found this,” he writes, M on the sea banks of the tide mill at Walton, in 1700, and in August 1722 I afterwards 
observed the same, only larger, on the sea banks on the left hand of the road from Heybridge to Maldon.” 
The discovery was first recorded, as “ Limonium Anglicum minus, caulibus 
ramosioribus, floribus in spicis rarius sitis,” in the third volume of Ray’s “ Historia 
Plantarum ” in 1704 ; and the plant is still growing in the neighbourhood of both 
these localities. 
