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THE INDIAN SPECIES OF ERIOCAULON * 



By P. F. Fvson, M.A., F.L.S., 

 Presidency College, Madras. 



The investigation of the Indian Species of Eriocaulon on which 

 the following account is written arose out of the difficulty found in de- 

 termining some of my own collections in South India, which led me to 

 examine the collections in the herbaria of the Koyal Botanic Gardens, 

 Calcutta, and at the Agricultural Station, Coimbatore (Madras), and 

 subsequently in those of the Peradiniya Gardens, Ceylon, the Forest 

 College, Dehra Dun, and the Agricultural College, Poona, for types not 

 found in the two former. 



From an examination of the sheets in the Calcutta herbarium it 

 was soon clear that other collectors besides myself have found the 

 identification of species difficult. As far as India is concerned there 

 are, if we exclude local Floras which have largely followed the F.B.I., 

 only two works in which descriptions of the species are given : 

 Hooker's Flora of British India, Vol. VI, (1894) and Ruhland's 

 monograph in Engler's Das Palanzenreich (1903). The former of 

 these is naturally now incomplete, being without species which have 

 been founded since its date. The latter is not available to the ordi- 

 nary botanist, and even if it were is, since it contains all the species 

 of the world, too cumbersome for the collector. It is therefore 

 thought that a revision of the Indian species accompanied by illus- 

 trations would perhaps be welcomed by collectors of this interesting but 

 difficult genus. 



It may not be out of place in this connection to note that the 

 identification of a species from its published description alone is near, 

 ly always fraught with some, often with very grave risk of error ; and 

 that only by reference to the actual type sheet can certainty be attain- 

 ed. None of the species of this genus were, as far as I know, founded in 

 this country, so that the actual specimens from which they were des- 

 cribed are not here but in Europe. We have however in this country 

 duplicates of many of the type sheets, and though the possibility of 



* This paper was accepted by the editor of the Records of the Botanical 

 Survey of India in September, 1918, but owing to congestion of work for 

 that periodical is by his permission now printed here. A preliminary abstract 

 appeared in this Journal, Vol. L, p. 49. 



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