24 abstracts: botany 



BOTANY. — The cotton of the Hopi Indians: A new species of Gossypium. 

 Feederick L. Lewton. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 

 60 : no. 6, with 5 plates. October 23, 1912. 



The early Spanish explorers discovered in 1540 the region now occupied 

 by the pueblo Indians and recorded the cultivation of the cotton plant 

 by the Indians. That the cliff-dwellers, the ancestors of these pueblo 

 Indians of our Southwest, cultivated, spun and wove cotton, has been 

 shown by the work of several eminent ethnologists. Fragments of 

 cotton fabrics are common in the villages of the cliff-dwellers which were 

 in ruins when first seen by the white man. 



After tracing the history of cotton cultivation by the Indians of this 

 region and its use by them for ceremonial and household purposes, a 

 technical description of the cotton now grown by the Hopi Indians is 

 given and published as a new species under the name Gossypium hopi. 



This cotton is conspicuously different from the American upland 

 cottons in color of foliage, flowers, habit of branching, etc., and it is 

 believed that it has never been cultivated by the white man or had any 

 influence in the development of the types of cotton so largely culti- 

 vated in the East and South. 



The Department of Agriculture has experimented with the Hopi cotton 

 for several years and the experiments show this cotton to be remarkable 

 for its earliness and its ability to grow under very dry conditions. 



Owing to the ease with which machine-made cotton yarn can be pro- 

 cured by the Indians from the traders, but very little Hopi cotton is 

 now grown by them, and the smallness of its bolls and poor yield of 

 fiber have not made its cultivation attractive to the white man. 



F. L. L. 



BOTANY.^ — Ruhelzul cotton: A new species of Gossypium from Guatemala. 



Frederick L. Lewton. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 



60: no. 4, with 2 plates. October 21, 1912. 

 Gossypium irenaeum is described. This is a shrubby species culti- 

 vated by the Kekchi Indians at Rubelzul, a part of the finca "Trece 

 Aguas," a few miles from the town of Senahu in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. 

 It is planted about the door-yards and yields longer and finer fiber than 

 the species commonly planted by the Kekchi Indians in regular patches, 

 oftentimes at some distance from their dwellings. The most prominent 

 character of this new species is seen in the remarkable development of 

 the calyx, which reaches proportions not known in any other species of 

 Gossypium. F. L. L. 



