86
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
although one showed a small blossom which was evidently an
albino.
I have a fresh locality for Melampyrum arvense L., viz., near
Cressing Temple, on the roadside between Witham and Braintree.
These stations may be worth recording.—Edwin E. Turner,
Coggeshall.
Do Plants over-reach themselves.—The dispersal of seeds
is ever a fascinating subject with the Nature-lover, and is usually
made much of in books of Nature study. The several species
of the Geraniaceae are often quoted as illustrative of such facts,
and in this connection it has occurred to me on a good many
occasions during the past few years that the methods used in
this plant family are sometimes not "an unmixed blessing."
The species which first held my attention in this respect is
Erodium cicutarium (the Storksbill). The fruits, as is well
known, detach themselves in a very characteristic, manner from
their supporting column, and the drawn-out point of the carpel
twists up spirally and its free end stretches out in a slight curve,
like the end of a watch spring. The fruit is sprung by the
unequal tension of the ripening tissues of the carpels, and is
ejected to a considerable distance. In fact, some flowers were
placed in the centre of a large table, and the next morning
the fruits were picked up from the floor all around, some of them
quite three of four yards from the flowers. When, therefore,
this plant grows on a bank at even a slight elevation from a road
or footpath, most of the fruits find their way on to the hard gravel
and cannot fulfil the object of their existence in reproducing the
species. Thus in several places in Essex where this plant has
been noted for a number of years, one looks in vain to find it,
and the probabilities are that if the seeds had fallen amongst the
vegatation of the bankside, it would still have held its place in
the flora of the district.
The same facts also apply to Geranium columbinum, a rarer
species, which ejects its seeds by the spiral coiling of the carpels,
very much after the manner of a stone from a catapult. During
several years a search was made for this species in a narrow
lane, where usually there are two or three plants to be found,
but it was almost given up as useless, when, to our surprise, one
plant was turned up inside a field where evidently the seed had
been thrown between some pailings.