LADY’S FINGERS — continued. 
and effect in the circumstance that it generally occurs on a calcareous soil. Dr. 
C. E. Moss, for instance, in “ Types of British Vegetation,” enumerates it with such 
plants as Hippocrepis comosa, Poterium Sanguisorba, Helianthemum Chaniiecistus^ Asperula 
cynanchica. Campanula glomerata, and Ophrys apifera, as “ characteristic of calcareous 
grassland but absent from or rare in siliceous grassland.” In the same volume, 
however, it occurs, with such another species usually taken as calcicole, viz. 
Blackstonia perfoliata, in a list of the species in the grassland of the hollows in the 
Lancashire sand-dunes. The very first record of the species as a British plant would 
seem also to have been from sand; for Gerard, in 1597, mentions Anthyllis 
Icguminosa as growing “ upon Hampstead Heath near London.” 
Our one British species has a short, branched, woody rhizome ; herbaceous, 
silky aerial stems, often prostrate and seldom rising more than a foot ; and impari- 
pinnate leaves of from 3-13 narrow distant leaflets. The involucre of linear bracts 
or “ fingered bracteas,” as Smith calls them, is the apparent origin of the most 
generally popular English name of the plant. Lady's Fingers. The pale, inflated, 
membranous, hairy calyx has five teeth, is as a whole longer than the petals, and 
encloses the very small, pointed, smooth, one-seeded pod. 
Several varieties have been described, of which the most marked is the Anthyllis 
coccinea of Linne, the A. Dillenii of Schultz, so called because recorded in 1724 by 
Dillenius. This plant, which is represented to the left of the type form on our 
Plate, is smaller, prostrate, with the leaves of the involucre almost as long as the 
flowers, which are cream-colour with scarlet tips. Though first recorded from 
Pembrokeshire, it is specially characteristic of the South Coast. Babington described 
a variety ovata, with a large, broadly-ovate, terminal leaflet, which the root-leaves on 
the right-hand side of our Plate resemble. The var. Allionii of De Candolle has its 
stems clothed with spreading hairs, whilst those of the type are generally adpressed 
and the var. rnaritima of Koch Is a very hairy, tall, erect, branched form, with little 
but general luxuriance to distinguish it. The mere colour of the flower seems 
specially variable in coast stations, such as the Lizard, where yellow, cream-coloured, 
white, scarlet, and red may be seen growing together. 
Several species are grown in rock-gardens and shrubberies, such as the 
rose-coloured alpine A. montana Linne ; the shrubby, yellow-flowered A. Hermanni^e 
Linne, from the Eastern Mediterranean, often misnamed Cytisus gr^ecus ; and the 
evergreen Silver-bush or Jupiter’s Beard [A. barba-Jovis Linne) of Italy and Provence, 
a shrub covered with silvery down. 
