FROM UPPER BURMA AND THE SHAN STATES. 7 
are covered in spring with small, pretty, white flowers, con- 
trasting well with its dark green finely-pinnate leaves. It is 
much browsed by cattle in the neighbourhood of villages, and 
then assumes a stunted, thick-set habit, reminding one, from a 
distance, of furze bushes on an English common. Although 
spread over the whole plateau of the Southern Shan States, it is 
only common in particular localities, where it sometimes forms 
extensive thickets. 
A tall, bushy Lespedeza (L. Prainii), bearing large, dense 
terminal panicles of fine blue flowers, is another common and 
conspicuous plant, and would be well worth cultivation in our 
shrubberies, if sufficiently hardy. 
Compositæ are more largely represented than might have been 
expected, in a region regarded as relatively poor in the order, 
amounting to nearly eight per cent. of the collection. Ten out 
of thirteen tribes are represented, and many fine species beautify 
the grassy plateaux during the raiuy season and early autumn. 
The curious Euphorbia-like, fleshy-stemmed Notonia, bearing 
handsome yellow flowers, is not uncommon on the higher levels ; 
and there is a singular prostrate variety which trails over the 
rocks in a very remarkable manner. 
Two species of arboreous Composite are common; one of 
them, Vernonia Aplinii, is new, and attains a height of over 
twenty feet with a relatively stout trunk. It is common in the 
upper region of the forest, at elevations of about 3000 feet. The 
other, Leucomeris decora, a member of the Mutisiaceæ, a group 
very sparsely represented in Asia, is also found in other hilly 
parts of Burma, but is more usually met with in the forests 
clothing the sides of the hills and ravines in the interior of the 
mountains. 
Another plant worthy of notice is the singular endemic cam- 
panulaceous Codonopsis convolvulacea, first described by Kurz. 
It is common over the whole Shan plateau—its wiry stems 
creeping among grass, round the culms of which it twines, until 
it attains air and sunlight, when it expands its beantiful dark 
blue convolvulus-like flowers. 
Among the Primulacee the pretty little Primula Forbesii, 
previously recorded only from the neighbouring Chinese province 
of Yunnan, and botanically interesting as forming a connecting- 
link between the genera Primula and Androsace, deserves 
mention. It grows abundantly in almost every damp locality 
