usually naked, but sometimes shaggy with silky hairs, especially
beneath. In drying, the veins become prominent
on both sides, and the edges of the leaves slightly rolled
back. Stipules mostly shorter than the leaf-stalk, nearly
ovate, flat; the edges serrated with glandular teeth; the disk
without glands, except two or three at the very base. Catkins
upright, stout, cylindrical, obtuse, about two inches
long, on hairy stalks of somewhat less, in general, than their
own length, furnished with 4—6 leaves similar to those on
(he branches. Flowers closely set. Calyx-scale nearly
black, oval, rounded, very silky.’ Germen on a stalk shorter
than the calyx-scale, rounded at the base, tapering upwards,
obsoletely quadrangular, covered more or less
densely with silky hairs. Style short, cleft sometimes almost
to the base, so as to form footstalks to the thickish,
bifid, spreading stigmas, which are reddish with a tinge of
yellow, soon turning brown. The male plant has not come
under our notice.
It would be necessary to inspect the specimens preserved
in Lightfoot’s herbarium, to ascertain whether the plant
found by Dr. Stuart in the mountains of Glen Co (see Engl.
Bot. I860,) was this species, of which we have specimens
from him as S. myrsinites from Breadalbane, or whether
it was really the S. myrsinites of Engl. Bot. Should it
prove the former, we have no good authority to regard the
Engl. Bot. plant as a British native, nor do we know its
origin. It differs from S.procumbens by its smaller, rounder,
more conspicuously serrated leaves; shorter, almost
ovate catkins; shorter, more truncate, and paler calyx-
scales, and more distinctly quadrangular germen. From
the remarkable prima facie resemblance of its leaves to
those of Betula nana, Mr. Forster has suggested for it the
name of S. betulifolia.
The true S. myrsinites of Linnaeus appears to be S. arbu-
tifolia of Willdenow, S. myrsinites f3 of Smith. This has,
like S. betulifolia, short catkins and distinctly serrated
leaves ; but these are more acute and of an ovate-lanceolate
figure, and the long style seems to afford a distinctive
character. It occurs in various Scottish mountains. S.
Macnabiana of Macgillivray, in Jameson's Edinburgh Journal
for October 1830, is probably to be referred to it.—
W. B.