NOTES ON SOME PLANTS PECULIAR TO ESSEX.
275
Erucastrum inodorum, Reich. This Charlock-like plant was
discovered in 1864, two years after the publication of the "Flora."
A few specimens were found growing on the railway bank at
Wenden, by Mr. Joshua Clarke, who received the twenty-guinea
gold medal awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society for its dis-
covery. In 1886 it was found in abundance growing on the rejected
chalk thrown out of the pit, too small for making lime, where the
lime-burners say that it has grown for thirty or more years. This
was at Little Walden, on the north side of Saffron Walden.
Of the plants growing about Saffron Walden, the following may be
worthy of notice :—
Anemone Pulsatilla, L. (locally "Dane's-blood"). The Bart-
low Hills is the only station in Essex for this pretty plant. Mr.
Gibson describes it as "abundant" on the hills, but when I have
visited them I have been scarcely able to find a plant; it may
be one of those that according to the varying of seasons, or other
causes, are scarce or plentiful, and of which I give some instances
below. The school-children, whose play-ground the hills are, search
for the blooms and pick them as soon as they show, leaving nothing
for the botanists. When I was present at the exploration of the
larger tumulus at Bartlow, Prof. Sedgewick at first said that it was
not an artificial hill, but a natural one, as it was stratified—the
cutting showed a stratum of earth, next one of gravel, and one,
higher still, of chalk, as if the soil which composed this mound had
been brought from different places. It was on this zone of chalk
that the Anemone used to grow. No botanist alludes to the Anemone
Pulsatilla as "Dane's-blood"—it is a purely local name, and it is
not a good descriptive one, as the blossoms of the Pasque-flower are
of a deep bluish purple. The expressed juice of Sambucus edulis,
to which the name "Dane's-blood" is generally given, may have
some resemblance to blood. [See notes on this subject in Essex
Naturalist, vol. i, p. 150, and vol. ii, p. 39.]
Carduus eriophorus, L. Years ago, a very beautiful thistle
made its appearance for four or five yards along a hedge-bank in the
green way opposite "The Roos," Saffron Walden. It had not been
seen that anyone could recollect before; people still remember the
"glorious thistle," which, although searched for, has not been seen
dried plants to puzzle you. Sometimes Galium aperine and G. vaillantii are very distinct, at
others it would be a task for any botanist to decide which is which. Gibson thought them dis-
tinct, but there may be hybridization."—Ed.