264 MR. J. 0. BAKER ON A COLLECTION OF 



Notes on a Collection of Flowering Plants made by L. Kitching, 

 Esq., in Madagascar in 1879. By J. G. BIker, E.R.S. 



[Eead November 4, 1880.] 

 (Plates VII. & VIII.) 



In the present paper I wish to describe 28 new flowering plants, 

 and notice a few of the most interesting of those already known, 

 which are contained in a collection made last year (1879), during 

 an extensive missionary tour in Madagascar, by my friend Langley 

 Kitching of Leeds. The party to which he belonged landed at 

 Tamatave and first made theirway to Antananarivo, the capital city 

 of the Hovas, which is situated on a dry bare rocky eminence about 

 70 miles from the coast in S. lat. 19°, at an elevation of about 

 eight thousand feet above sea-level. The principal districts in 

 which the plants were collected are the northern and eastern 

 slopes of the mountains of Ankaratra, the highest range in the 

 island, situated some thirty miles south-west of the capital, in the 

 province of Imerina, or, as Bojer wrote it, Emirna, attaining an 

 elevation of 9000 feet or more. The Betsileo country occupies 

 the central mountain-range between the 21st and 22nd parallels 

 of latitude, and the Ibara country lies still further south. Tanala 

 occupies the slope of the central mountains towards the eastern 

 coast between lat. 21° and 23°. The part visited was the neigh- 

 bourhood of the town of A'manga, in the extreme north. I have 

 already, in the Journal of Botany, 1880, p. 326, given a full list of 

 the Eerns of the collection. There are now upwards of 200 spe- 

 cies known in the island, of which Mr. Kitching gathered about 

 120, of which 10 proved to be new. The majority of the 200 

 are, of course, tropical and subtropical types ; but the higher 

 mountains, like those of Bourbon, produce a few characteristically 

 temperate forms, such as Lycopodium clavatum, Nephrodium Filix- 

 mas, and Aspidium aculeatum. The flowering -plants of the island 

 are much less fully known than the Ferns ; and we have in the Kew 

 herbarium considerable collections made by Bojer, Lyall, and 

 Meller, which have never been worked out specifically. 



Ranunculus pinnatuSjPozV. Ankaratra mountains. "Widely 

 spread in the Cape and Tropical Africa. 



Clematis (§ Flammula) ibarensis, Baker, n. sp. 



A climber, with very slender obscurely pubescent branches. 

 Fully-developed leaves pinnate ; petiole 1—1^ in. long ; leaflets 

 5, ovate-lanceolate, cuspidate, rounded at the base, dentate, 2-3 



