186 Dr. Francis HaAmiILTon’s Commentary 
sparsis of his father (Thes. Zeyl. 229. t. 109.), which does not 
seem to me to be a Vitex. 
M. Lamarck returns to the distinction of Rumphius, charac- 
terizing the Cara Nosi or Lagondium vulgare by its having folia 
simplicia ternataque subintegerrima, and the Vitex paniculata (Enc. 
Meth. ii. 619.) as having folia quinata integerrima: but then 
this plant, although it is the Lagondium litoreum of Rumphius, 
is not the Bem Nosi of Rheede, which M. Lamarck considers as 
a mere accidental variety of the Cara Nosi, and therefore ex- 
cludes altogether the l;tez Negundo, as a species. I must say 
however, that the Viter which grows so common, and half wild, 
in the hedges about gardens and villages, just like the Sambucus 
nigra in Europe, has leaves simple, ternate, and quinate, entire 
and serrated ; and it must be observed, that Rheede says of the 
Bem Nosi, folia in petiolis terna et passim quina. I agree there- 
fore with M. Lamarck in thinking the Cara Nosi and Bem Nosi 
mere accidental varieties of the same species, to which should 
be referred the Lagondium vulgare of Rumphius. As however 
M. Lamarck has seen specimens both in flower and fruit of an- 
other species, which he considered as the Lagondium litoreum, 1 
have little doubt of Rumphius having been in an error, when he 
compared his plant to the Bem Nosi, and that this error misled 
Linnæus into the mistake of distinguishing as species the Ne- 
gundo mas et femina. 
Notwithstanding the observations of M. Lamarck, Willdenow, 
who never saw the plant, joins the Vitex paniculata, or Lagondium 
litoreum, with the Bem Nosi and all its concomitant synonyma, 
as given in the Flora Zeylanica (p. 414.), and thus retains the 
V. Negundo : yet in the annexed observation he admits that the 
V. trifolia has folia subtus tomentosa, and the V. Negundo folia 
subtus nuda ; while the very name Bem, as Rheede observes, im- 
plies 
