LLOYDIA SEROTINA. 
Br James Britten, F.L.S. 
It is not often that one finds an account of a botanical excursion 
in a work of fiction ; but in the collection of short stories by C. E. 
Montague, lately published under the title Fiery Particles , is a 
sketch entitled “In Hanging Garden Gully” which merits that 
description. It is mainly concerned with a graphic and exciting- 
account of an expedition undertaken by the writer in company 
with an enthusiastic botanist in search of Lloydia in its Twll Ddu 
locality, which, attended with many risks, was rewarded with success. 
The account brought to my mind a passage in It. A. Salisbury’s paper 
(read before the Horticultural Society in 1812) in Hort. Trans, i. 
328 (1820), wherein the name Lloydia first appears: “Dr. William 
Alexander, of Halifax, like Sir Thomas Gage, was near losing his 
life in climbing to the dangerous summits where it grows wild.” 
Alexander, Salisbury says, gave him a plant which he “sacrificed in 
examining the root, which is not bulbous”—it may be remembered 
that the first description of the plant (R. Syn. ed. 2 ; 233 ; 1090) 
characterises it as Bulbosa Alpina juncifolia etc.—“ but most 
faithfully represented by Mr. Sowerby in his excellent figure ” 
(E. Bot. t. 793). The plate, published Oct. 1, 1800, was taken from 
a specimen sent to Sowerby by Smith in that year and received by 
the latter “in a fresh state” from John Wynne Griffith (1763— 
1834). Both specimen and drawing are in the Department of 
Botany, where is also a sheet from the Banksian Herbarium endorsed 
by Banks: “ Trig-y-fylichan, part of the Glvder Range on the N. 
side of Llanberris in the County of Carnarvon, found by J. W. 
Griffith of Garn Esq r . the 23rd of June 1794.” 
Griffith was introduced to Banks in 1783 by a letter from John 
Lloyd—a frequent correspondent, whose letters range from 1778 to 
1790, and whose interests, though including Botany, were chiefly geolo¬ 
gical—as “a very near neighbour of mine, a very goodnatured young 
man of family and a decent fortune, now at Cambridge, quite an 
enthusiast in Botany and very desirous of being introduced to you 
and your Hortus ” (Banks Corr. iii. 162). The letter is dated 
from “ Wickvvar,” but this, I think, is an error in transcription for 
“ Wygfair (i. e. St. Mary’s Wood) near Denbigh or St. Asaph,” 
whence another letter is dated and where Lloyd resided. It would 
appear that John Lloyd had sent a specimen of Lloydia to Banks 
which the latter seems to have regarded as unsatisfactory ; writing 
on Oct. 1, 1778, Lloyd says: “I was much surprised to find you 
were not satisfied of the bulbose plant I sent being Bulbocodium: I 
do not recollect ever before having seen any plant with a bulbose root 
near Lanberris ; and the leaves answered the description very exactly, 
so I hope, upon the whole, you may be mistaken; it grew deep 
betwixt a cleft in the rock which was moist facing the north, with a 
great deal of earth about the root, which lay 4 inches under the 
splinter of the rock” (Banks Corr. i. 214). Twelve years later 
Journal of Botany.—Yol. 61. [September, 1923.] r 
