130 
Among these nine species there is one about which there has been 
a considerable amount of doubt. It is that described by General 
Munro as A. racemosa; and it undoubtedly consists, as first suggested 
in the “ Bambuseae of British India ” and afterwards emphasised by 
Sir D. Brandis in his ‘ Indian Trees,’ of two forms, a high-level 
one 2 to 4 ft. in height and a low-level one reaching 12 to 15 ft. and - 
even 30ft. This low-level form is the plant so common in the 
woods around the hill station of Darjeeling, used for mat-making, 
roofing material, fencing and fodder, and known to the Nepalese 
collectors of fodder for horses as ‘ Maling.’ Naturally, in such 
places, it is so much cut for fodder that it remains small, but at a 
little distance away, as on the slopes of Mounts Tongloand Sandukpho 
or the Nepal frontier, it grows in dense thickets gregariously and is 
often found with oaks and rhododendrons, and in places with large 
yew-trees and trees of Tsuga Brunoniana. During a residence, off 
and on, of about 10 years, as a Forest Officer in Darjeeling, I 
searched for the flowers constantly and never found them, and others 
have done the same, as, for instance, Mr. G. A. Gammie who, in a 
letter quoted at p. 10 of the “ Bambuseae of British India,” wrote 
‘a plant which, although so abundant round Darjeeling as to be 
almost exclusively used as fodder for ponies, has never been known 
to flower there.” On the other hand, in a note by Mr. G. H. Cave 
communicated to me by Mr. W. W. Smith, late Curator of the 
Herbarium of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens, he says, “my own 
opinion is that individual specimens of the small bamboo, A. racemosa, 
common from 6000 to 10,000 ft. and not found below 5500 ft., flower 
at least every third year (possibly it could be found every year), and 
that the flowering plant though crippled does not necessarily die. 
~The Lepcha collectors and the ‘ grass cutters’ ers confirm 
this, although most of them say that the flowering plant dies.” It 
seems strange that, if it is the case that it is so often in flower, 
specimens of the flowers are not to found in the Herbarium at 
ew, nor, I think, in that at Calcutta. The first flowering specimens 
that I have seen are those which were collected in May, 1904, b 
Mr. B. B. Osmaston, then Deputy Conservator of the Darjeeling 
Forests, on the slopes of Mount Tonglo at 9000ft. He calls it 
‘sporadic-flowering,’ and his specimens are very good and are 
accompanied by leaves and leaf-sheaths which clearly are those of 
the low-level form. These collections are probably ‘those referred 
to by Brandis as mentioned in a Bengal Forest Report. Press of 
other work agetsy my examining these specimens carefully till 
quite tecently, but I have now done so and find that the flowers 
that collected at Mainom by Sir J. D. Hooker (collection Hook. f. & 
Th.) at 8000 ft. on Dec. 27, 1848, Vern. * Pummoon, and is in leaf 
spathacea’ and ‘ A. spathiflora’ ; the culms are said to have been 
12 ft. high. They have scabrous internodes, glabrous leaves with 
4-5 pair of main nerves and are 12-14 em. long and 1-5 em. broad ; 
the leaf sheaths with few ciliae at the mouth. Mainom is a conical 
