sharp-pointed. Germen ovate» with a gland at its base,
glabrous, tapering upwards.into a style as long as the tube
of the corolla. Stigma of 2 large rounded lobes, deep
purple.
This new British Orobanche has been discovered in the
neighbourhood of Folkstone by the Rev. Gerard Edward
Smith, author of an interesting Catalogue of Rare Plants
of South Kent,” and communicated by him to Mr. Sowerby.
The stations given are hedges and waste ground below
Cæsar’s Camp hill, the Sugar-loaf hill, in East-wear Bay,
near Lydden Spout, and eastwards,to Dover, growing upon
the roots of Galium Mollugo, Rubus fruticosus, Sçc. Its
discoverer has the merit of determining it to be the O.
caryophyllacea of Smith in Linn. Trans. ; a species which
has, as we are there assured, been confounded on the one
hand with O. major, and on the other with O. elatior. From
the former it differs in its stamens being internally hairy at
the base, and in the spreading limb of the corolla ; from the
latter, by the rounded segments of the limb ; from both, by
its deep purple-coloured stigma and larger and more distant
flowers. It quite agrees with Sir J. E. Smith’s own
specimens, as well as with my Swiss and French specimens
of O. caryophyllacea, as far as can be judged from dried
plants.
DeCandolle in his Flore Française has referred O. caryophyllacea
to the O. vulgaris of Lamarck : and this, in
DeCandolle and Duby’s Botanicon Gallicum, is made, with
a mark of doubt, the var. (3. of O. Rapum of Thuillier.
It seems to agree better with the O. Galii of that work,
the “ O. Galii-Molluginis of Vauch. Monogr. t. 7 and Mr.
G. E. Smith also finds it a parasite upon the Galium. I
abstain from other references, because without accurate figures,
or the most laboured descriptions, and those made
from recent specimens, it is hardly possible to determine a
species of Orobanche. W. J. H.