advance towards maturity. The whole plant is of a remarkably
glaucous green colour. The petals are white
with a very slight tinge of green.” It is difficult to say?
from the appearance of the root of this plant, whether it be
biennial or perennial. In Mr. Borrer’s garden it is usually
the former. Reseda alba is considered an annual species,
and in that particular alone does it appear to differ from
our R.fruticulosa. A Reseda regarded as R . alba has been
found, but perhaps not truly wild, in other parts of Britain,
as at Stokes Bay near Gosport, by the Rev. W. Stevens
Bayton, and at Weston-super-mare, Somersetshire, by Mr.
J. Woods. Mr. Mackay considers it 11 naturalized” on
Sandy Mount and Dundrum, and between Cork and
Glenmire, Ireland.
In the hope of ascertaining from the Linnaean Herbarium
how far Reseda alba and R. fruticulosa are distinct, Mr.
Borrer examined the specimens there, and found the differences
between them very slight. R. alba has shorter
flower-stalks, and more cylindrical racemes, and the terminal
lobe of its leaves is more similar to the others (less
dilated) than that of R . fruticulosa. Again, very nearly
allied to our R . fruticulosa, is R. undata of Linnaeus, which
all preceding- authors seem to have kept distinct both from
it and 7?. alba, but which Duby, I am happy to find, has recently
united to the latter, in his Botanicon Gallicum.
W. J. H.