NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
101
Or had friends in this house, and he may have intro-
duced the seed into this garden as a curiosity. I think
this is possible, and it is not an impossible thing for seeds to
lie dormant for centuries and then re-appear, is it ? Indeed, the
re-appearance of plants after many years is a most carious fact.
Twenty years ago Schrophularia vernalis grew plentifully in a
ditch by the garden side of Finchingfield Vicarage ; then it
utterly disappeared, and has no more been seen in its old
habitat. But a mile away, in the plantation of Spain's Hall, I
found it this summer in vigorous abundance. I never saw one
plant in this latter locality up to the time of leaving Finching-
field in 1889 ; it only then grew by my father's garden. Now
it has migrated to a more suitable spot a mile away.
Melampyrum arvense is also growing abundantly this year in a
cornfield about two miles from Rayne—in Felstead parish—and
by the side of an old and tangled horseway called locally "Crom-
well's Lane." I sent an account of this lane, with its unusual
flora—for these parts—to the Essex Review for October, 1902.
Another plant that has sprung up during the present summer is
Coriandrum sativum ; I found it also in a cornfield, but in Rayne
parish. And in that parish also Hottonia palustris grows, but it
is difficult to get a specimen.—(Miss) E. Vaughan, "Turners,"
Rayne, Braintree, August and September, 1907.
Miss Vaughan has very kindly presented specimens of the
above named plants to our herbarium. Our member, Mr. F. W.
Elliott, writes that "Erysimum orientale Br. appeared in my
garden at Bushey, Herts, in 1906. The plant grew close to a
manure heap, and therefore the seed may have been introduced
from the Continent with corn or hay. I do not know whether
the heat of fermentation would be fatal to the germination of the
seed, but this manure when delivered was very poor stuff, nearly
new and dry, and it had not fermented.''
[Bentham states that the plant occurs "in stony fields and waste places
in Central and Southern Europe and Western Asia, extending northwards to the
Baltic. In Britain it has been gathered occasionally, near the Southern and
Eastern Coasts of England, but appears scarcely to be permanently established.''
—Ed.]
Verbascum floccosum and Senecio viscosus at
Colchester.—When out collecting last week with my son we
were much surprised to come upon a number of large plants of