flowers from the end of May throughout the greater part
of summer. It is given as a German plant, and we have
it from Madeira.
It is usually a smaller plant than M. palustris, with a
simple upright or ascending stem, scarcely a foot in height,
often less ; sometimes drawn out to a greater length when
growing in a current. In comparatively dry places it is
found procumbent. From its base are sent out several procumbent
shoots, which take root, and by which the individual
plant is continued, the original root lasting but one
season. Leaves Ungulate, the lower ones, which are at first
crowded, but soon decay, often attenuated to an indistinct
footstalk; the rest rather distant, sessile, their edges de-
curved,especially at the base, and slightly decurrent,whence
the stem becomes obscurely angular. Racemes terminal,
and axillary from a few of the upper leaves; at length long
and spreading horizontally. Pedicels longer than in M.
palustris, in their late recurved state mostly several times
as long as the calyx, which is divided at least half way, and
is generally, not invariably, closed or connivent over the
dark brown shining seeds. A small leaf is often found at
the base of the terminal raceme, and several of the lower
flowers of the lateral racemes are usually subtended by
such. The pubescence of the stem and its stolones is in
general copious, and consists of long, spreading, white
hairs; that of the rest of the plant, except, often, on the
edges of the leaves, is appressed; on the calyx it is usually
more abundant than in M. palustris. Corolla mostly smaller
than in M. palustris; its lobes, as in that, flat and slightly
emarginate, or, very often, in both, only apparently so from
the downward flexure of the apex : its colour sometimes as
bright a blue, but more generally, perhaps, paler, and less
unfrequently pure white ; and the fainter the blue of the
expanded flowers, the less perceptible is a rose tint in the
buds. Analogy forbids much confidence in the comparative
length of the style ; but in all that we have examined we
find it in M. palustris as long as the tube of the corolla, and
in this species and in M. ccespitosa only about half as long.
M. ccespitosa is distinguished from M. repens by the widely
expanding calyx, the smaller and less flattened corolla with
perfectly entire lobes, the want of stolones, and the appressed
pubescence of the stem: but the last-mentioned character
seems of less importance than it has been supposed
in this genus, if the M. laxijlora and M. strigulosa of Reich-
enbach are mere varieties of M. palustris, as Mertens and
Koch, and after them Lejeune and Courtois, have regarded
them; an opinion which German specimens, for which we
are indebted to Professor Mertens, appear amply to confirm.—
W. B.