152 EXGLISn BOTANY. 
Si melius alpinus, Linn. Heath. Handbook Brit. Bot. p. 326. 
Sonchus cseruleus, Carrier. Sm. Eng. Bot. No. 2425. 
Cicerbitns alpina, Wallr. Sched. Crit. p. 434. 
Leaves glabrous, the lower ones lyrate- and runcinate-pin- 
natifid, with a large deltoid-acuminate terminal lobe ; uppermost 
leaves lanceolate or strapshaped-lanceolate, undivided. Anthodes 
racemose or in a racemose panicle. Rachis and pedicels with 
gland-tipped hairs, the latter with long bracts at the base. 
Pericline oblong-cylindrical, sparingly glandular-hairy. Achenes 
cylindrical - prismatic, slightly attenuated towards the apex, 
scarcely at all compressed. 
On moist places on alpine rocks. Very rare. On Lochnagar, 
Aberdeenshire ; Glen Callater, Glen Isla, and Glen Dole, Clova, 
Forfarshire. 
Scotland. Perennial. Autumn. 
Stem thick, succulent, hollow, furrowed, 18 inches to 4 feet 
high, simple up to the inflorescence. Lower leaves large, attenuated 
into winged petioles, which are dilated at the base and amplexicaul, 
with rather blunt auricles, the winged portion usually giving off 
a few pairs of segments much smaller than the terminal one ; 
all the segments dentate or denticulate ; upper leaves somewhat 
rhomboidal, elliptical-amplexicaul ; uppermost ones very narrow, 
passing gradually into the long slender bracts of the inflorescence. 
Anthodes f to 1 inch across, pale-blue. Inner phyllaries nearly 
equal, generally purplish ; outer ones few, unequal ; all with a few 
jointed gland-tipped hairs down the middle. Pappus of rather 
coarse dirty-white hairs. Plant light-green, the leaves and lower 
part of the stem glabrous. 
Blue Sow-thistle, 
French, Lw'tron des Alpes. German, Gebirges M ilchlattich. 
GENUS XXXIX— S O N C H U S. Linn, 
Anthodes many-flowered. Pericline oblong-ovoid, of numerous 
phyllaries, imbricated in several series, the outer ones much 
shorter. Clinanth naked. Achenes compressed or sub-com- 
prcsscd, ribbed, not terminated by a beak or cup-shaped disk. 
Pappus of white slender capillary hairs. 
Herbs, rarely soft wooded shrubs, with leafy steins and irregu- 
larly-corymbose rather large anthodes. Plorets yellow. 
