I 
A NEW BRITISH AND YORKSHIRE 
ST. JOHN’S WORT. 
F. ARNOLD I. EES. M.R.C.S. 
In the Journal of Botany, for Nov., Mr. C. E. Salmon. F.L.S., 
of Reigate, has capped his services to Yorkshire botany bv 
the discovery, and differentiation of an intermediate kind of 
Hypericum, primarily as of Sussex, but incidentally for our 
northern County as well, through the medium of the Kew 
Herbarium. The name of the growth, a form of H. quad- 
rangulum, betwixt H. perforatum of our sandy banks, and H . 
tetrapterum of wetter, boggier places, has been decided as 
properly Hypericum Des’ Etangsii after its describer in 1841. 
who rightly ranked it under, but demarked it off from H. 
quadrangulum which meant both H. dubium Leers and tetrap- 
terum Fries. These growths, three integers of the field afore- 
time, and now four — and it is almost certain that they pollinate 
or cross — have many characters in common, a half-round or 
squary stem, a pellucid punctation of the leaf (held up so as to 
see the light through) and a pellucid or opaque veining of the 
leaves viewed in the same way. These features are present, 
or shade off or are quite absent, in the several ‘ species.’ This 
Sussex one H. Desetangsii has been found in the Kew Herb, 
gathered by Mr. Bowman at ‘ Richmond, Yorks.’ Yes, now one 
is shown the track it needs no botanic Holmes to run it to earth. 
Baker in ‘ North Yorkshire ’ (p. 275) includes it under his H. 
dubium, as found up to 1.250 feet in Cotterdale (J. Percival), 
and I knew it well, deeming it a hybrid or an unnamed inter- 
mediate, in Blackburn dike spinney about a mile below Hawes 
in the same Wensleydale. In Swaledale by the river and 
Castle Bank slope at Richmond, lower down under Iron Bank, 
and higher up at Gunnerside I saw it in 1906 when touring the 
Dale a-foot with Edmund Bogg. As Mr. Salmon says, it will 
probably be found in other places ; I would add, calcareous 
soiled situations. It has a family likeness to fine large leaved 
H. perforatum, but its stem is four-angular, the leaves more 
oval in contour with both dots and pellucid veining, and with 
broader sepals. From ‘ true ’ Leersian dubium which has 
a quadrangular stem, it is known by its punctate as well as 
dear-vein leaves and its narrower sepals, and from the old 
square-winged stemmed tetrapterum by its larger flowers, and 
its quite different leaf features. There is said to be an imper- 
forate variety, demarked by Bonnet in 1878. but of this I know 
nothing. No pellucid dots would make the growth H. 
‘ dubium’ unrestricted, of a verity. So much, or so little, may 
there be in a name. The Sheffield (Don A alley, etc.) growth 
is true dubium, and so, I find, is the Wensleydale river-bank 
growth, judging by old herbarium specimens. 
Naturalist, 
