290 NOTES.—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
BOTANY.
Lathyrus tuberosus at Dunmow.—On 3rd August,
1913, I found at Dunmow a species of Lathyrus which I identified
as L. tuberosus. Not having heard of this plant ever being
found in this neighbourhood, I sent it to the East Anglian
Institute of Agriculture at Chelmsford for verification. The
Principal, Mr. A. Malin Smith, M.A., very kindly wrote me that
the specimen I sent was certainly L. tuberosus, and that he had
never heard of it being found so far away from Fyfield as
Dunmow. I found it growing in some grassland on a light clay
soil about one hundred feet distant from the railway line, and
about half a mile from High Street, Dunmow, in a S.W. direction.
There were only about four or five plants spread over a patch
some three or four feet square. I carefully covered over the
remaining flowers before leaving, in order to preserve the plant
to this neighbourhood. My son also found this plant in the
same situation a week previously, but I lost the specimen he
gave me before. I had had time to identify it. He. thought it a
dwarf kind of the Garden Everlasting Pea, which it somewhat
resembles. On the eighth of August I also found growing in
a wood near here two specimens of Epipactis latifolia.—Wm.
J. Farrington, High Street, Dunmow.
Anomalous state of Spartina stricta near Brightling-
sea.—Mr. B. F. Barnes, of Ilford, sent me in August, 1913.
a specimen of the grass Spartina stricta (Roth.) recently gathered
at Brightlingsea. It presented peculiar features, so I sent
it to the Curator of Kew Gardens, and the Keeper of the Her-
barium has replied as follows : "The specimen is an anomalous
state of S. stricta. The anomaly is not confined to the dis-
position of the spikelets, but extends to some degree to the
latter in so far as I found the lowermost spikelet of the lateral
branch imperfectly 2-flowered. The lower floret had three im-
perfect stamens and a pistil with two stigmas, the upper lacked
the palea and had only one stamen, and a rudimentary pistil
with one bristle-like stigma, while the other was replaced by a
delicate subulate membrane."
The specimen, which was unfortunately scrappy, has been
placed in the Kew Herbarium. The rest of the gathering
sent was normal. The point that was at once obvious was