222
HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY.
Sir John Hill's specimen, labelled "The least Hares-eare.
Bupleurum minimum R.S. pag. 221. This grows in dry, sandy
places—as by the road-side going from Laingdon Hills to the
Saltmarshes, a mile from the Hills. It flowers in July:" (2) one
from the Banksian herbarium, labelled "Maldon, Essex, Mr.
Lightfoot, 1775": (3) three from Edward Forster's, labelled
respectively "Bupleurum tenuissimum. On a common between
Warley Street and Hare Hall, 1793"; "near South End;" and
"on the wall of the Blackwater between Heybridge and Gold-
hanger, near Maldon, 1793"; (4) one from Dr. Varenne labelled
"Walton-on-the-Naze, 1867"; and (5) one from Mr. Arthur
Bennett from "Near Southend, Sept. 1882." Parkinson, in the
Theatrum (p. 578), mentions a B. minimum as well as
B. angustifolium and B. latifolium, but only speaks of the
two last-mentioned as British. How, in his Phytologia
(p. 18), records "Bupleurum minimum nondum descriptum
floribus luteis. The smallest Hares-eare with yellow flowers:
found in Surrey," a record which Mr. Clarke quotes,3 with
a query, under B. tenuissimum; and Merrett (Pinax, p. 17) lumps
Bupleurum angustifolium monspeliense, G. 608, with B. minimum,
p. 578, and records it from "betwixt Bromeley and Eltham in
Kent, and at Paddington beyond the Bridge in the way
to Harrow." This reference is quoted by Edward Forster
(E.B.S. 2763) for B. falcatum, a determination in which Messrs.
Trimen and Dyer do not concur (Flora of Middlesex, loc. cit.).
Blackstone's record (Specimen Botanicum (1746), p. 8) "Bupleurum
minimum Park. 578, angustissimo folio, C. B. Pin. 278. . . . By
the roadside, near Thorndon, Essex, Mr. Hill," probably refers to
Hill's specimen now in the British Museum Herbarium and is,
therefore, B. tenuissimum, as inferred by Gibson (Flora of Essex,
p. 134). Thus there is no satisfactory record of B. falcatum
before Thomas Corder's in 1831, whilst Brewer's record of this
species from Reigate Heath (Flora of Surrey, p. 101) is not above
suspicion.
" Catanance leguminosa quorundam J. B. . . Crimson-grass-Vetch. I
have found it in many places, as in the bushes about Pancras-church near London,
at Black-Notley in Essex."
This is a record mainly interesting as being one from Ray's
3 First Records of British Flowering Plants, ed. ii., p. 60.