swingle: a salt-tolerant citrous plant 421 



sidered the type of the genus. The name Sderostylis, meaning 

 hard style, must of course have appUed to some species the styles 

 of which were seen, whereas the type specimen of Sderostylis 

 spinosa has no flowers,^ and the original description does not 

 describe the flowers. Very probably Blume had only a single 

 specimen of this plant from which to draw his description of the 

 species. He had, however, flowering specimens of some, if not 

 all, of his other species of Sderostylis, now considered as belong- 

 ing to Glycosmis, which have very short, thick styles that 

 might easily have given occasion for the generic name. Material 

 of S. trifoliata and S. lanceolata in the herbarium of the Museum 

 in Paris, labeled in Blume 's hand, shows styles characteristic of 

 Glycosmis and suggestive of the name Sderostylis. 



Finally, characteristically spiny material from the type local- 

 ity (it should be noted that the other four species of Blume 's 

 Sderostylis are inermous) shows the plant in question to be very 

 difl"erent from Blume's genus in flower and especially in style 

 characters. 



Sprengel, in 1827, referred the Sderostylis spinosa of Blume to 

 the genus Limonia, and Dietrich in 1840 referred it to Glycos- 

 mis. In 1846 Roemer created a new monotypic genus, Merope, 

 based on Blume's Sderostylis spinosa. There is every reason to 

 believe that Roemer did not see actual specimens of the plant, 

 but drew the characters of his new genus exclusively from 

 Blume's description. In 1912 Koorders^ records this plant from 

 Noessa Kambangan under the name Atalantia spinosa, giving 

 "Hook., Index Kew. II. 849" as authority.^ 



A photograph of Blume's original type specimen at Leiden, 

 obtained through the kindness of Dr. Th. Valeton, and a subse- 

 quent study of the specimen itself show beyond question that 

 the Sderostylis spinosa of Blume is the same as Willdenow's 



1 "Comme vous voyez le spec'men (I'original de Sderostylis spinosa de Blume) 

 n'a ni fleurs ni fruits." Valeton, Th. Letter dated Leiden, 10 October, 1910. 

 In February, 1912, I had an opportunity of seeing the specimen myself in the 

 Rijks Herbarium at Leiden. 



2 Exkursionsfl. Jav. 2: 427. 



^ The reference in Kew Index under Sc'erostylis is as follows: "spinosa Blimae, 

 Bijdr. 134 (Atlantiae sp.)" 



