NOTES ON THE FLORA OF CEYLON. 148 



Ceylon, I know not on what authority, in ' Fl. Brit. India ' i., 

 p. 330. I have since found it plentifully about Tissa-maha-rama, 

 an ancient place in the S. Province, formerly of great importance. 

 The plant has a wide range through the drier parts of India, and 

 extends to Arabia and Trop. Africa. 



Triumfetta cnnspicua Trim., n. sp. 



Grewia jMpnHfolin Vahl. — First sent to me by H. Nevill, Esq., 

 C.C.S., in December 1881, from Puttalara, in fruit; and in that 

 state not easily determinable. I have found it abundantly in the 

 Hambantota district in the south-east of the Island, and it is 

 doubtless frequent in the dry coast districts. This is a desert 

 shrub, first gathered by Forskal in Arabia. When the fruit is 

 symmetrically and completely developed, which is rarely the case, 

 it consists of two separable portions, each of which is didymous, 

 and contains two bony pyrenes ; the pyrenes are again 2-celled, 

 with a very thick and hard partition and a single seed in each cell. 

 The fruit is thus normally 8-seeded. 



Bahamodendron Berryi Arn. — Under the Tamil name of " Mul- 

 kilivai," this is a well known hedge plant in the Jaffna district of 

 the extreme north of the island, and is employed for the same 

 purpose along the west coast of Ceylon as far south as Colombo, 

 where alone I have seen it. Mr. W. Ferguson, F.L.S., to whom 

 I am indebted for the above information, also tells me that it is 

 obtained from wild plants in the islands of the Gulf of Mannas 

 (belonging to Ceylon), especially from that one named Delft by the 

 Dutch, and I regret that I have as yet had no opportunity of 

 verifying the statement. In parts of Southern India, however, I 

 observed B. Berri/i in vast abundance ; it is used for miles in 

 fencing the railway line about Erode, &c., and attains fully 10 ft. 

 in height. I did not see any, however, that looked wild. At 

 Trichinopoly I succeeded in getting some specimens, and Major 

 Johnson, of Mettapollium, has since sent better ones from Coim- 

 batore. The Indian plant is very spiny, with thick, horizontally 

 divaricate interlaced branchlets (making an almost impervious 

 hedge), small rigid 8-foliate leaves with sessile obovate leaflets, — 

 the terminal are much the largest, — and little clusters of 2-5 

 sessile flowers. As noticed in ' Medicinal Plants,' sub t. 59, this 

 plant must be very closely allied to, if not identical with, B. Myrrha 

 Nees, figured at t. 60 of the same book, but if it afford any gum- 

 resin in S. India it is of a character very different from myrrh." 



As cultivated in Colombo, &c., the plant takes on a very 

 different appearance ; the spines are more slender and much less 

 numerous, the leaves much larger, usually pinnately 5- or 7-foliolate 

 with serrate leaflets, and the infloresence large and compound, in 

 divaricate cymes. So unlike is this slender-growing leafy shrub to 

 any Bahamodendron (except some forms of B. africanum) that I 



* Beddome, who gives a poor figure (Fl. Sylv. t. 126) of 7?. Berryi, says that 

 it forms a good-sized tree in the dry jungles to the east of the Nilgiris, and that 

 a gum resin exudes from it. He also notes that the Howers are frequently 

 destroyed when young by some insect. I find them generally malformed from 

 this cause in Ceylon. 



