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STAC II Y S ambigua.
AmbiOsuous Woundwort.
DIDYNAMIA Gymnospermia.
G en. Char. Cal. 5-cleft, awned. Upper lip of the
corolla vaulted; lower reflexed at the sides, the
large middle segment notched. Stamens when old
bent outwards.
Spec. C h a r . Six flowers in a whorl. Leaves oblong,
heart-shaped at the base, on footstalks. Stem
hollow.
T h e specimen in our plate was gathered in the Orkneys,
where this plant is very abundant in potatoe fields and other
cultivated ground, by Mr. VV. Borrer and Mr. W . J. Hooker,
who also found the same near Loch Carron and in Glen Ely
in the north of Scotland, in September 1808. We have
received in August 1809 a specimen, gathered by Mr.
J. R. Weatherhead in a boggy place at the foot of one of the
Pentland hills near Edinburgh, of the same plant in a less
luxuriant state, about a foot high, with much narrower and
more silky leaves, and a scarcely spotted flower. This latter
approachef nearer to S. palustris, t. 1675, from which however
it differs in its stalked leaves, which are not dilated at
their base, and in having a faint degree of the peculiar foetid
smell of S. sylvatica. Mr. Hooker’s and Mr. Borrer’s specimens
more approach this latter, but the stem is hollow, (as
Mr. Weatherhead well observes in his), not filled up with
pith as in sylvatica; the leaves are oblong, not. rounded,
though slightly heartshaped at the very base. The root is
white and creeping. Hairs on the stem more or less deflexed.
Corolla with a variegated lip in general, though' sometimes
very slightly so. Stem perfectly straight at the base, and
about as high as that of S. sylvatica.
S. alpina, which we at first suspected our plant might be,
differs from all the above-mentioned in the great breadth an
bluntness (with a point) of the segments of its calyx, whipk
^re strongly reticulated when in seed,