312 
As to the name P. purpureum, this was given by Schumacher to 
a planit collected by Thonning on the Gold Coast in the latter part 
of the 18th century. A specimen from the same collector and 
there being already a P. macrostachyum by Brongniart, was renamed 
- Distribution. The area of P. purpureum lies between 10° N. Lat. 
and 20° 8S. Lat. The northern limit runs from Sierra Leone through 
the great equatorial forest belt to the Cameroons and the basin of 
the Ubangi, then to the Nile (at 3° N. Lat.), Lake Victoria and 
German East Africa, where it reaches the coast in about 5° S. La 
In the south ihe area is bounded by a line extending from Loanda in 
about 9° S, Lat. through Angola to Katanga and then across the 
Middle Zambesi to Eastern Rhodesia, whence in about 20° S. Lat. 
it strikes eastwards as far as Beira. Within this immense area it 
occurs mainly along watercourses and in marshy depressions, but 
also enters the bush and forest where open spaces afford sufficient 
light. Under favourable conditions it forms extensive reed jungles, 
as for instance in the delta of the Zambesi and along the Shire. 
Even in forests it is locally “only too common,” as Welwitsch 
puts it, In the interior of Sierra Leone it ascends nearly to 
900 m., and near its southern limit in the Melsetter district of 
Rhodesia to 1800 m., whilst in the Cameroons it is said to reach 
even the upper limit of woods, It is in rich marshland where it 
attains to a height of 7 m. and even more, whilst on drier soil, as in 
the savannas of Hast Africa, its culms are hardly more than 2m, 
high, It also appears occasionally on abandoned cultivated land 
and has, in a few cases, been observed in a state of cultivation,** 
Vernacular names. 
_ Vernae' It is not surprising that a grass of so wide a 
distribution and striki 
ng appearance should have special names in 
In Peters, Reise nach Mossamb. vol. vi (1864), p. 552. 
K. Schumann in Engl., Pflanzenw. Ost Afrne. C. (1895) 105, 
** Kaiser, Acc. to Just’s Jahresber. 1898, yol.i,p,561, 
