F. Vaillantii, the white-flowered plant for the former, and
that with rose-coloured flowers for the latter, stating that they
are both furnished with minute sepals. It appears to me that
the leaves of our plant agree better with the “ laciniis linearibus”
of Loiseleur’s F. Vaillantii than with the “ laciniis fili-
formibus ” of his F. parviflora. Koch says of the same plants,
“ fol. laciniis sublinearibus” and {i fol. laciniis linearibus,” and
also states that the sepals of F. parviflora are “ corolla sexies
brevioribus latitudine eandem aequantibus.” Reichenbach says
of the former, “ foliolis elongato-lineari-lanceolatis,” and of the
latter, “ foliolis angustissime linearibus,” and figures its sepals
as being fully as broad as the corolla. Again, all these authors
consider the fruit of F. Vaillantii to be slightly pointed, but
less so than that of F. parviflora. In Vaillant’s figure, which
is the original authority for the plant named after him, the
leaflets are represented as broader than those of the true F.
parviflora. Reichenbach has published specimens of both
these plants in his FI. Exsic., No. 1282, being his F, parviflora,
and No. 296, his F. Vaillantii; the latter is exactly our plant
with rose-coloured flowers, and the former is a plant that I have
never seen in Britain, although it is probably represented in
Engl. Bot. t. 590. A specimen from Smyrna, distributed as
F. Vaillantii by the Unio Itineraria, is our plant with white
flowers.
Root small. Stems slender, erect or spreading, angular,
furrowed, branched. Leaves glaucous, 3 or 4 times divided
into numerous slender, broadly linear acute segments. Spikes
small, nearly sessile, rather lax, elongating slightly after the
flowers have fallen. Flowers small, white with a purple tip,
or rose-coloured with the tip darker, upon short peduncles,
which are usually much shorter in the white than in the red
flowered plant. Sepals very minute, often considerably narrower
than even the peduncle, and many times shorter than
the corolla, rhomboidal, cut in the upper half. Fruit globose,
rather compressed, with a slight point, its peduncle about as
long as the bractea in the white-flowered plant, considerably
longer in that with red flowers.
The specimens figured were gathered amongst corn on the
Gogmagog Hills, .Cambridgeshire, in June 1841.—C. C. B.