86 
notes—Original and selected. 
although one showed a small blossom which was evidently an 
albino. 
I have a fresh locality for Melampyrum arvense L., viz., near 
Cressing Temple, on the roadside between Witham and Braintree. 
These stations may be worth recording. —Edwin E. Turner, 
C o go e shall. 
Do Plants over-reach themselves.— The dispersal of seeds 
is ever a fascinating subject with the Nature-lover, and is usually 
made much of in books of Nature study. The several species 
of the Geraniacece are often quoted as illustrative of such facts, 
and in this connection it has occurred to me on a good many 
occasions during the past few years that the methods used in 
this plant family are sometimes not “ an unmixed blessing.” 
The species which fust held my attention in this respect is 
Er odium cicutarium (the Storksbill). The fruits, as is well 
known, detach themselves in a very characteristic manner from 
their supporting column, and the drawn-out point of the carpel 
twists up spirally and its free end stretches out in a slight curve, 
like the end of a watch spring. The fruit is sprung by the 
unequal tension of the ripening tissues of the carpels, and is 
ejected to a considerable distance. In fact, some flowers were 
placed in the centre of a large table, and the next morning 
the fruits were picked up from the floor all around, some of them 
quite three of four yards from the flowers. When, therefore, 
this plant grows on a bank at even a slight elevation from a road 
or footpath, most of the fruits find their way on to the hard gravel 
and cannot fulfil the object of their existence in reproducing the 
species. Thus in several places in Essex where this plant has 
been noted for a number of years, one looks in vain to find it, 
and the probabilities are that if the seeds had fallen amongst the 
vegatation of the bankside, it would still have held its place in 
the flora of the district. 
The same facts also apply to Geranium columhinum, a rarer 
species, which ejects its seeds by the spiral coiling of the carpels, 
very much after the manner of a stone from a catapult. During 
several years a search was made for this species in a narrow 
lane, where usually there are two or three plants to be found, 
but it was almost given up as useless, when, to our surprise, one 
plant was turned up inside a field where evidently the seed had 
been thrown between some pailings. 
