110. R e ic h . F l. E x e . v . 1.256. W i m m . e t G r a b
F L S ile s . v . 2. p t . 2. 176.
Crépis calycibus muricatis. H a l l e r H i s t . S tir p .
H e lv . v. 1. 14. n . 32.
E cannot refuse admission to a plant that has occurred
in Essex, Herts, Surrey, the Isle of Wight, Lancashire and
Fifeshire, although introduced, we doubt not, with foreign
seeds, and perhaps, like Centaurea solstitialis and some others,
but a transient visitant, as the younger Haller, who gave it its
name, believed it to be in Switzerland*. It was first found in
this country by Mr. G. Stacey Gibson, at Thaxted, Essex, in
1843, and has since been observed, always among clover, in
several other places around Saffron Walden, and at some miles
apart, by that gentleman and Mr. Joshua Clarke. Under
their guidance our specimens were gathered at St. Aylotts, in
the autumn of 1847. It is in flower from July to September,
and even later when undisturbed. The figure was made from
a plant which had grown up again after mowing.
Root biennial, fusiform, branchy. Stem in uninjured plants
single, erect, about two feet high, slightly fistulöse, sulcate,
branched and leafy throughout, stained with red towards the
base and at the setting off of the branches, beset with scattered,
spreading, longish, bristle-like but soft, simple hairs, least numerous
and sometimes almost wanting about the middle part
of the plant. Branches axillary, ascending, subdivided, terminating
in loose and irregular corymbs of flowers. Leaves
bright green, very variable in shape and in the number and
nature of their segments, which are however all acute; their
margins not revolute: radical and lower stem-leaves tapering
down from a large terminal lobe to an alate stalk dilated at its
base, sometimes lyrate, sometimes merely pinnatifid, with the
segments in either case pointing backwards, sometimes scarcely
* “ In transalpinia vulgo, cis Alpes seminibus tantum cum advenis pro-
venit, mox disparet.” Naturw. Anzeig. 1. c.—We have not seen the former
account by the same author in Roemer’s Archiv, 1796.
more than sinuate or coarsely toothed; intermediate leaves
semiamplexicaul, the dilated auricles usually cut into many
segments, the lower of which point downwards and often form
a sagittate base'; upper leaves gradually smaller and less
toothed, tapering from the widened, less laciniate and mote
distinctly sagittate base; the uppermost forming narrow-lanceolate
or linear bracteas under the flower-stalks, with or without
a sagittate base: the midrib and nerves of the leaves beneath
are hispid like the stem; their disk, especially in the
lower parts of the plant, mostly sprinkled with less conspicuous
hairs, such as fringe also the edges. Flower-stalks erect in
all stages, slender, of unequal lengths, simple or forked, bristly,
leafless, or bearing a minute bractea or two near the flower.
Heads shortish; scales acute, very bristly; those of the outer
row spreading, linear or narrow-lanceolate, with an extremely
narrow whitish margin; those of the inner row twice as long,
erect, tapering from a. wider base, the pale margin wider, the
keel prominent, dark, but with a little white cottony pubescence
among the bristles, as there is also on the stalks immediately
below the flower. There are no glands on any part of
the plant. Florets glabrous, with short teeth, pale yellow, the
outermost with or without an external stripe of red. Styles
green. Fruits tapering, after the flowering is past, to a beak
which ultimately equals the body of the seed in length, ribbed,
pale brown; the ribs and beak serrulate with minute ascending
teeth. Pappus not greatly exceeding the involucre, erect,
snowy white, composed of numerous fine hairs beset with microscopic
denticles which point upwards. The pits of the
receptacle have a minutely jagged edge, fringed with a few
short hairs.
Crepis setosa is well distinguished by the conspicuous spreading
seta-like hairs on the stem and branches, but especially on
the flower-stalks and involucres. In colour and general appearance
it most resembles, among our native species, the
more luxuriant varieties of C. virens, mistaken till lately by
British botanists for C. tectorum of Linnaeus, and figured as
such in Eng. Bot. t. 1111. Its flowers too are of about the