With regard to the true R. Hmodi, Wall., which is the R. 
australe of Don, it appears hitherto to have been found by Dr. 
Wallich’s collectors only and in Nepal; and, as Royle has pointed 
out, Wallich’s specimens of it preserved in the Linnean Herba- 
rium are mixed with another species, 2. Webbianum, Royle. 
The latter has since been collected in Kumaon (and in the 
Tibetan province of Gugi, north of Kumaon) by Messrs. Strachey 
and Winterbottom, in whose herbarium it is distributed under 
the name of 2. modi. It is a specimen of this latter that 
Meisner has further described as R. Hmodi in Wallich’s < Plante 
Asiaticee Rariores’ (vol. iii. p. 65) ; and it was probably this also 
that Wallich intended should bear that name, as it yields a far 
better drug than the plant of which he sent home seeds, and 
which has ever since been cultivated as R. Hmodi, Wall., or R. 
australe, Don. 
Duscr. Root a slender tap, sometimes several feet long, bright 
orange within, spongy, and smelling slightly of medicinal Rhu- . 
barb. Stem two to three feet high, sparingly branched, more 
or less deeply red-purple or vinous, strongly grooved, covered, as 
well as the petioles, panicles, peduncles, and pedicels, with minute, 
granular, crystalline points. Stipules rather large, lanceolate, 
acuminate. Pefioles slender. eaves a span long, broadly cor- 
date, deeply bilobed at the base, with long, acuminate points, 
pubescent below, opaque above, covered with minute crystalline 
cells. Panicle sparingly branched ; dranches slender, rigid, bear- 
ing small ovate leaves at the axils of the main divisions. Pedicels 
_ very slender. Mowers upwards of a quarter of an inch across, — 
_ deep lurid red-purple, or brown-purple. Zodes of the perianth 
nearly equal in size, rounded. Fruit as in R. Emodi, Wall. 
Fig. 1. Flower. 2. Pistil. 3. Fruit :—magnified. 
