[Crown Copyright Reserved.] 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
No. 1.] (1913. 
I—NOTES ON SOME SPECIES OF ACALYPHA. 
D. Prain anp J. HutTcHinson. 
The earliest effort to enumerate the South African species of this 
genus we owe to Thunberg, in whose Prodr. Pl. Cap., part 2, p. 117 
(1800), we find diagnoses of three species: A. glabrata, A. decumbens, 
and A. cordata. In the edition of Thunberg’s Flora Capensis, 
published by Schultes (1823), we find at p. 545 descriptions as ‘well 
as diagnoses of the same three species, with diagnoses and descrip- 
tions of two others, A. acuta, Thunb., and A. obtusa, Thunb., 
on p. 546. 
When, however, we turn to Thunberg’s herbarium, which, thanks 
to the kindness of Professor Juel, has been entrusted to us for 
study, we find that of the two species of Zragia diagnosed in 
Prodr, Pl. Cap., part 1, p. 14 (1794), and described in the Flora 
Capensis, ed. Schultes, p. 37 (1823): one, 7. villosa, is an -Acalypha. 
We find, moreover, that in Thunberg’s herbarium, the plant which 
he collected between Sunday River and Fish River, and which he 
has written up as A. glabrata with his own hand, is not the plant 
to which the diagnosis and description published by Schultes apply. 
It is a plant with opposite leaves, and is in reality the plant 
described as “A. acuta.’ On the other hand, this name A. acuta 
is that which Thunberg has himself written on the sheet of the 
woody species with alternate leaves, which has been described as 
A. glabrata. 
The opposite-leaved species described as A. acuta, happens to be 
an Adenocline and does not further concern us; the other stern . 
A, obtusa, described on p. 546, is a Leidesia, and so may also be put 
aside. But the two remaining species described on p. 545 as 
‘(Oreet—ta.) Wi 108908, 0 1S, DAR 
