NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
287
further south than a few hundred yards of St. Mary's Church
(once the parish church of Ilford's village days and situated
on the busy High Road of the present day) to meet with four
plants which are still in the 9th Ed. of Babington's Manual
(pub. in 1904) considered "rare." They are Lepidium ruderale,
which literally covers certain rubbish heaps two minutes' walk
from the church. Erigeron canadense, now a common weed,
in almost every bare place in the neighbourhood. Crepis tarax-
acifolia, almost as common in the neighbourhood of what is
known as the South Park (5 min. walk from the Church)
as the C. virens. And Senecio viscosa fairly abundant in the
same places. A mile or two further south, by the riverside on
rubbish heaps belonging to the Coalite Company, Salvia ver-
ticillata is to be met with, as is the case also at Purfleet. This
plant is not reported at the British Museum from any Essex
locality. And to go still further afield, the writer has this year
found Lepturus filiformis, which is a fairly uncommon Essex
plant, and Medicago sylvestris, reported in Babington to be
found "in sandy and gravelly places in Norfolk and Suffolk."
This last named plant, a solitary specimen, was in a field
adjacent to the salt marshes near Shoeburyness, where the
first-named plant was fairly abundant.—Rev. A. C. Morris,
St. Mary's Vicarage, Ilford, 4 Aug. 1910.
Gregarious Fungus (Peziza) in Essex.—I met with this
yesterday (1st January 1911), in rather striking circumstances.
On the grass by the roadside, near a farm at Wakes Colne, in
the Colne valley, a quantity of "cavings" and rubbish from a
threshing machine had been thrown out for the chickens to
scratch over. I think it was the result of threshing clover
seed. Anyway, both patches (each of which was about ten feet
across) were thickly grown over with this fungus, forming two
brilliant orange masses and producing a very striking effect. The
cups of the fungus were more extended when growing than they
are now, which, of course, added to the effect produced. Mr.
Massee informs me that the plant is Peziza luto-nitens B. and Br.
This is a fairly common species, generally gregarious, and often
forming large sheets. He adds that it is believed by some
botanists to be a small form of Peziza aurantia Pers.—Miller
Christy, F.L.S.