334 THE JOURKAL OF BOTANY 



out before, tliat no one who had ever seen the true asiatica could 

 miss the striking character afforded by the length of the peduncles 

 of the flowering-cymes in proportion to the pedicels, a character 

 which in this group, however, it must be remembered, is shared 

 with G. sapida. Schumann further notes, accurately, that 

 G. asiatica is not known as a native from any part of Africa, its 

 nearest ally being, possibly, a plant found by Mr. Scott Elliot (see 

 his No. 5277) in South-western Nigeria covering the laterite 

 plateau over a considerable area, described by Schumann as 

 G. lasiodisc2cs. A scrap of the same species is preserved at the 

 British Museum, gathered about a century before by Mungo Park 

 in the same region. From the whole group of " tiliafolia" and 

 its allies, asiatica differs in that it is not properly a tree, but like 

 G. sapida, G. sclerophylla, also G. herbacea of Hiern, and some 

 other African types, it sends up quickly-growing subherbaceous 

 shoots from a short perennial trunk periodically. In asiatica, as 

 grown in Northern India, the perennial trunk forms a stout stem, 

 sometimes attaining 3-4 feet in height and 8 or more inches in 

 thickness, and the arching branches, which bear leaves arranged 

 bifariously and proportionately very large, are not necessarily 

 renewed annually, as is said to be the case with sapida. From all 

 forms of sapida, asiatica can be at once distinguished by the base 

 of the leaf, which in asiatica is always more or less cordate, 

 whereas the leaf-base in sajnda is invariably cuneate. Other dis- 

 criminating characters, it must be confessed, are hard to establish. 

 In order to put this troublesome matter on a clear footing, we will 

 for the present skip the Koxburghian species * Qbis and 9, which 

 belong to a distinct section of the genus, and consider No. 10, 

 G. tilicefolia. Koxburgh's description of this does not fit the true 

 plant of Vahl properly, and it seems very possible that he had but 

 slight acquaintance with that species which is characteristic of 

 the extreme south of the peninsula. Wight and Arnott (Prodr. 

 p. 80) say: " Most authors proceed on the supposition that Eox- 

 burgh's G. arborea is distinct from tilioifolia, but Eoxburgh only 

 called it so before Vahl's description reached him, when he adopted 

 Vahl's name both in his Hort. Bengh. and Fl. Ind." They have 

 already cited Koxburgh's unpublished drawing No. '227, which 

 was originally marked as G. arborea, for their G. tilicefolia, i. e. 

 Vahl's. 



The first thing to be noted is that tab. 227 was obviously based 

 on more than one specimen, and although the -twig in the centre 

 might pass for Vahl's tilicefoUa, the drupes on the right below it 

 almost certainly belong to something different ; wdiether we regard 

 that something as a separable species or not, it certainly is not 

 typical tilioifolia. In the Madras Herbarium there is a suite of 

 specimens collected by Mr. Barber towards the summit of a hill 

 near Vizagapatam, presenting a type closely allied to G. asiatica, 

 and not improbably = G. subincequalis of De Candolle {Prodromus, 



* By some oversight oppositifulia, which stands actually first in the Flora 

 Indica, bears the same number, 8. 



