ON THE MORPHOLOGY AND HISTOLOGY OF PIPER BETLE. 357 
"The Morphology and Histology of Piper Betle, Linn. (the Betel-vine). By 
Н. M. ('ніввёї, M.A., Agricultural College, Poona, India. (Com- 
municated by HAnorp H. Many, D.Se., В.1.8.) 
(PLATES 17-19 & 1 Text-figure.) 
(Read 19th December, 1912. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Prrer Berrie, Linn. (the Betel-vine) belongs to the Natural Order Рірегасег. 
It is largely cultivated in various parts of the East, viz., the Indo-Malayan 
Peninsula, Madagascar, and Bourbon. In the New World its cultivation 
is restricted to the West Indies *. The species is a native of the Malay 
Archipelago T. 
The growth-form of the plant is that of a liane climbing by adventitious 
roots, The plant in its natural haunts, occupying as it probably did the 
summit of a tropical rain forest, must at one time have been exposed to 
the full blaze of a tropical sun. Under cultivation—in parts of India, at any 
rate—the plant is grown under the shade of other plants, and the individuals 
are close together so as to form poorly lighted humid Mallas or groves. 
This ehange in habitat could not but have produced some effect on the 
structure of the plant. The Betel-leaf plant thus forms a particularly 
interesting subject for a structural investigation which aims at ascertaining 
what characters are phyletic and what are physiological, and of the latter 
what are adapted to the natural earlier habitat in the forests and what to the 
artificial modern one created by man. With our present knowledge of the 
subjects of morphology and histology it is not possible to arrive at final 
answers to these questions. But it is obvious that before these could be 
given, accurate and detailed accounts of the structure of as many plants as 
may be possible should be available. What follows is a contribution to 
the list. An attempt is made at the end to interpret, from an ecological 
standpoint, the facts of the morphology and histology of the plant. 
* Engler and Prantl, ‘ Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, vol. iii. pt. 1, pp. 3-11. 
+ A. De Candolle, in his * Origin of Cultivated Plants,"gives the Malay Archipelago as the 
home of this plant, and takes it to have been under eultivation for more than two thousand 
years. Sir George Watt, in the ‘Standard Cyclopedia of Modern Agriculture, vol. ix. 
p. 200, mentions Java as the probable home of this plant. Mr. J. C. Konigsberger, Director 
of the Botanical Gardens, Buitenzorg, informs me by letter that this species has not yet 
been found in the wild state in any part of Java, and adds that it is, however, growing 
wild in Celebes, probably also in the Moiuccas. 
LINN. JOURN.— BOTANY, VOL. XLI. 2g 
