PREFACE. V 



the common Indian plant, hitherto universally known as 

 Crotalaria rubiginosa IVilld. In the F.B.I. the species 

 was given this name because, one must suppose, it 

 appeared to agree with the description by Willdenow of 

 a plant which was supposed to have been collected in 

 the East Indies. And all subsequent local Floras of India 

 have followed suit. As I had three nearly allied but yet 

 distinct forms, I sent them to Berlin for comparison with 

 Willdenow's type specimen. Dr. Harms, who very kindly 

 himself examined the plants, found to his ' great surprise * 

 that none of them was the same as Willdenow's plant, nor 

 was it identical with either C. wightiana or C. scabrella, 

 which were included in C. rubiginosa in the F.B.I. ; 

 but that Willdenow's type plant was identical with 

 C. sagittalis Linn,, a North American species. The Indian 

 plant, so long known as C. rubiginosa Willd., must there- 

 fore be given another name, and I have restored that of 

 C. ovalifolia, found on a specimen from Dindigul in the 

 Wallich herbarium. 



These instances will illustrate the necessity of 

 comparing plants with original type specimens : and 

 whenever this was possible it was done. Fortunately 

 Kew has, in the collections of Wight, Wallich and others, 

 most of the types of our species. 



The entirely new species, described here in English 

 for the first time, number ten ; and of these four belong 

 to the genus Eriocaulon, three to Crotalaria and one each 

 to Lasianthus, Anaphalis and Olea. The usual Latin 

 descriptions of these have already appeared in the 

 Kew Bulletin. In addition there are another Crotalaria, 

 another Anaphalis and a Senecio, which had been 

 described a short time ago in the Kew Bulletin or the 

 Records of the Botanical Survey of India. Of the fore- 

 going, two species of Crotalaria, two of Anaphalis, a 

 Senecio, an Olea, and four of Eriocaulon are figured 



