indestructibility in water recommends it. It is also used, 
as Mudar, medicinally, and a fine gunpowder charcoal is 
made from the wood. Rheede distinguishes a white and 
lilac-flowered variety by the colour alone. Roxburgh follows 
him in this. 
The specimen here figured was raised from seeds sent 
from the Kurnod district, Madras, by the Rt. Hon. M. E. 
Grant Duff, Governor of Madras, in 1883, which flowered 
in June of the present year. According to Aiton, it was 
cultivated in the Royal Gardens at Hampton Court as early 
as 1690. In India it flowers and fruits all the year round. 
Descr. A large shrub, almost a small tree, never leafless, 
with a trunk sometimes as thick as the thigh, and spreading 
sparingly leafy branches covered with ash-coloured bark ; 
shoots, leaves beneath and inflorescence clothed with white 
wool, eaves four to six inches long, leathery, pale green, 
opposite, decussate, subsessile, obovate or cuneately oblong, 
acute or mucronate; base often retuse, ciliate at the inser- 
tion of the very short petiole ; sometimes semi-amplexicaul. 
Flowers one to one and a half inches in diameter, in simple 
or subcorymbose umbels, with very thick peduncles and 
pedicels; colours a mixture of white, pale rose-coloured 
and lilac, buds ovoid. Sepals small, ovate. Petals broadly 
ovate, reflexed and twisted in flower. Staminal column 
very large, one-half to two-thirds of an inch long and 
almost as broad, between conical and broadly oblong, 
rather turgid in the middle, almost truncate at the top, 
spurs at the base involute, margins of the appendages 
tomentose. Lrwit-follicles three to five inches long, oblong, 
recurved, rounded at both ends, pale yellow, bladdery. 
Seeds three-quarters of an inch long, with a long silky 
coma.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Section of calyx, staminal column, 
3, pollen-masses :—all enlarged. rey ea met stapes 
