LIX._ PERFOLIATE SPRING-BEAUTY. 
Claytonia perfoliata Donn. 
T HE small Family Portulacace <e is cosmopolitan, but mainly American. Of the 
two or three species that represent it in this country, one — the inconspicuous, 
self-pollinating little Water Blinks ( Montia fontana Linnd) — is also cosmopolitan ; 
but the species of Claytonia have but little claim to be considered as indigenous 
British plants. 
Most members of the Family are smooth, succulent, annual herbs, with 
simple, entire leaves and cymes of perfect, and often showy, blossoms. There are 
two sepals or bracteoles, united at the base ; usually five petals ; five or ten stamens ; 
from two to eight, but generally three, carpels united into a one-chambered ovary ; 
and a few ovules bent on themselves like horseshoes ( campylotropous ) and springing 
from a basal placentation. The flowers are generally nectariferous and insect- 
pollinated, and the capsular fruits are often explosive. 
The genus Claytonia is distinguished by its five stamens and free petals. It 
comprises some twenty species, natives of North Temperate and Arctic Zones in 
America and North-west Asia, but found also in Australia. Some of them are 
perennial ; but the two species which have become naturalised in Great Britain are 
both generally annuals. Flowering early by the sides of streams in Virginia, they 
have obtained in their native country the name Spring-Beauty ; but cannot be said to 
be as yet generally known here by that or any other name. 
The genus was discovered by the botanist whose name it bears. John Clayton 
was born in Fulham, probably in 1686, and went to Virginia in 1705 with his father, 
an eminent lawyer who became attorney-general of the colony. He entered the office 
of the Clerk or Protonotary of Gloster County, and, succeeding to the post, held it 
for more than fifty years. He died in 1773. His manuscripts and herbarium were 
destroyed in the War of Independence ; but the specimens which he sent to 
Gronovius and which formed the basis of the latter’s “Flora Virginica ” (1739-45) 
are preserved in the British Museum collection at Cromwell Road, having been first 
bought by Lord Bute in 1778 for ^90 or £100 and then in 1794 by Sir Joseph 
Banks for less than half as much. 
Claytonia perfoliata was not known in England much before the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, and was not at all generally recorded in a wild state before the 
middle of the century. It has, however, increased very rapidly, and is now very 
general on sandy soil even at a distance from cultivation, whilst it sometimes becomes 
a troublesome weed in gardens. The larger lilac-flowered C. sibirica Linn£ is less 
common. 
It is very difficult to determine the precise period at which, and the means by 
which, the various components of our existing flora reached Britain. Unquestionably, 
many plants now well established and apparently wild are not truly indigenous in the 
