Indies, and figured in Roscoe's Monandrian Plants, and I 



am by no means certain that .1. officinarum is not referable 

 to that species, which was introduced from China into the 

 Calcutta Botanical Gardens, and from thence into other 

 Indian and English Gardens. Dr. Hance sums up th 

 difference between A. officinaru m and A. calcarata as follows, 

 the characters of the latter being taken from specimens so 

 named, cultivated in the Paradeniya Botanical Gardens, 

 and supplied to him by the late Dr. Thwaites. " A calca- 

 rata ; dried rhizoma chestnut brown, furrowed ; cut surface 

 brown ; colour stronger ; taste bitter, with a flavour of 

 rhubarb ; leaves deep green, aromatic, not hot, ligula one 

 quarter to one half of an inch, rounded or truncate ; ra- 

 cemes compound ; flowers with an oblong bracteole ; lip 

 yellowish with dark red veins. — A. officinarum, dried rhizome 

 red-brown, finely striate ; cut surface rufous ; taste warm 

 aromatic, of ginger, pepper, and camphor, very hot ; leaves 

 lighter green, hot; ligule three-quarters to one and a 

 quarter inch ; racemes simple, bracteole ; lip with no 

 trace of yellow. 



Now Mr. Hance has sent to the Kew Herbarium, together 

 with specimens of his A. officinarum, some of the very ones 

 which Mr. Thwaites sent" him as A. calcarata, and upon 

 which he instituted the above comparison ; and after a care- 

 ful examination of the latter, I very much doubt its being 

 Roscoe's plant of that name; for (what Dr. Hance does 

 not remark) the leaf margins are spiculose-toothed, whereas 

 those of A. calcarata as figured and described by Roscoe, 

 (Monand. PI. t. 68) are like those of A. officinarum, per- 

 fectly smooth ; moreover the ligule in Roscoe's figure is 

 quite as long (fully an inch) as in A. officinarum. The 

 racemes which are compound in Thwaites' plant, are (as in 

 A. officinarum) simple spikes in Roscoe's figure and de- 

 scription: In so far as I can determine the chief difference 

 between Roscoe's and Hance's plant is the much larger 

 flower of the former, which is one to one and a half inch 

 long, and the darker coloured lip, suffused with yellow, 

 and covered to the margins with red branching nerves. 

 Of the differences depending on taste it is impossible to 

 judge from dried rhizomes. With regard to the absence 

 or presence of the bractlet of calcarata, which is described 

 by Hance, it is, if present, overlooked by Roscoe, Roxburgh 



