538 NOTES. 



NOTES. 



Smithia blanda Wall. — Mr. F. M. Mackwood has communi- 

 cated to us his discovery that this is the food plant of a 

 butterfly pecuHar to Ceylon, Cyaniris lanha (Moore). — T. P. 



Oberonia recurva Lindl. — This orchid, which is said by 

 Trimen to be very rare, and of which only specimens from 

 Maturata exist in the Peradeniya herbarium, appears to be 

 fairly frequent at Hakgala. It was collected there in 1906 by 

 Mr. A. M. Smith, and in 1914 (April) by Mr. G. Bryce.— T. P. 



Heliotropium curassavicum Limi. — This plant was collected 

 m the Jaffna District by Mudahyar W. de Alwis Seneviratne 

 in 1912, but remained unidentified until recently. It was 

 collected again in the same district by Herr Rehnelt in 

 1913.— T. P. 



Insect Visitors to Flowers. — Little has been noted in the 

 Tropics on the subject of insect visitors to flowers. It may 

 be of interest to record, therefore, that one of the chief visitors 

 to the larger Leguminossa at Hakgala is a carpenter bee 

 (species ?). It has frequently been observed on Crotalaria 

 Walker i and Atylosia CandoUei there. At Peradeniya a 

 carpenter bee visits Calotropis, as is shown by the frequent 

 occurrence of the pecuUar pollen masses of that flower on the 

 limbs of the insect. — T. P. 



A new Alien. — Hyptis svMveolens Poit. has recently been 

 found -as a weed on a coconut estate in the Chilaw District. 

 This is a South American plant, which has been introduced 

 into several parts of Tropical Asia, but it has not been dis- 

 covered in Ceylon previously. Hooker, in Flora of British 

 India, records it as occurring in the Deccan Peninsula, Cachar, 

 and the Nicobar Islands. — T. P. 



Right- and Left-handed Coconut Trees. — The vascular bundles 

 of the coconut stem do not run straight up the stem, but in 

 a spiral inclined at an angle of about 10° to the vertical. In 

 the course of investigations made into the stiucture of the 

 coconut stem some years ago, it was found that the direction 

 of the bundles is not constant in the same stem as one i^roceeds 



