351 



incidents of the kind; the name 'potato' which in England, 

 when Shakespeare wrote, connoted I porno ea Batatas and no other 

 plant, is now among us exclusively restricted to Solarium tubero- 

 sum; the name ' pomme de terre/ now confined in France to this 

 Solanum, was at the opening of the eighteenth century as rigidly 

 restricted to Helianthus tuberosus. Those, however, whose ex- 

 perience has extended to Eastern races cannot fail to- regard as 

 singularly unlikely an assumption that there has been a change 

 in the incidence of the name Katu-katsjiL Nor is such a 

 hypothesis necessary. Regarding Katu-katsjil Rheede says: 



species est Tsjagari-Nuren, respectu radicis fructuum et verru- 

 carum." No figure of the underground tuber is given in the 

 case of either plant so that respectu radicis criticism is pre- 

 cluded. But when we examine the figure of Tjageri-Nuren* 

 (Hort. Malab. vol. vii. t. 33) which is the basis of 1). triphylla, 



Linn. (Sp. PL ed. 1, p. 1032), we find it to be a Dioscorea w T ith 

 capsules longer than broad and with clavate, not spherical, 

 axillary bulbils. In the case of Kattu-kelengu the account of 

 the underground tuber accords w r ith the characters met with in 

 the tuber of D. Wallichii, though Rheede attributes to it 

 properties more usually associated w T ith the tubers of D. bulbifera, 

 Linn. [1], a species which, though plentiful in Malabar, Rheede 

 omits from his work. This circumstance suggests that the aerial 

 tubers shown in the axils of the leaves of both Katu-hatsjil and 

 Kattu-kelengu, which agree with each other and with the aerial 

 tubers of uncultivated 1). bulbifera, may really have belonged to 

 stems of the latter species which grew T along with and were 



mistaken for those of D. W allichii 9 Hook, f . This inadvertence, 

 if it did take place, is easily explained. The flowering season of 

 Z). W allichii is at the end of rains and therefore is considerably 

 later than that of D. bulbifera, the leaves of which have largely 

 disappeared, though the bulbils may remain attached to their 

 bines, before the fruit of D. W allichii has become so advanced as 

 is shown in Rheede's figure of Katu-katsjiL We have, however, 

 stronger evidence that the omitted D. bulbifera was confused 

 with Kattu-kelengu in the circumstance that Rheede cites 

 Carando as one of its svnonvms. As Cooke has pointed out 

 (FL Bomb, vol. ii. p. 758), Kadu-Karanda in Western India 

 connotes the true uncultivated D. bulbifera, Linn. The error of 

 placing the aerial tubers of a Dioscorea which is bulbilliferous in 

 the leaf-axils of one which is not, was no more reprehensible on 

 the part of Rheede's artist than the parallel inadvertence in the 



case of Podava-kelengu (Hart. Malab. vol. vii. p. 97, tt. 51, 52) 

 where fruits of Naravelia zeylanica are shown as arising from the 

 axils of the leaves of T). hispida, Dennst.t The latter inadver- 

 tence has not prevented the recognition of what Podava-kelengu 



* For the difference in the two renderings of this name the Hortus 

 Malabaricus is responsible. 



t The converse of this old East Indian error took place, at a much 

 later date, in the West Indies. In 1858 Marsh collected in Jamaica and 

 distributed as his n. 1709 a mixture of the leaves of Clematis dioica, Linn, 

 and the fruiting panicles of Dioscorea niartinicensis. This undetected 

 melange was inadvertently made by Grisebaeh the basis of D. triphylla, 

 Griseb. (Flor. Brit. West Ind. p. 587) ; non. Linn, nee Jacq. (1864). 



