1915-16.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 13 



CreinanfJiodium compfuin, W. W. Sm. (Mekong- 

 Yangtze). 



Lychnis nigrescens, Edgew. (Mekong- Yangtze). 

 *Arenaria Delavayi, Franch. 



Cardamine granulifera, Diels (Mekong- Yangtze). 

 *Gentiana hepfaphyUa, Balf. f. et G. Forrest. 



Crepis rosularis, Diels (Mekong- Yangtze). 



Lactuca Soidiei, Franch. (Mekong- Yangtze). 



On the Sino-Himalayan Flora. By F, Kingdon 

 Ward, B.A., F.R.G.S. 



(Read February 10, 1916.) 



This is an attempt to explain in some measure the un- 

 doubted and long-recognised relationship existing between 

 the flora — at least the alpine flora — of the Himalayas and 

 that of Western China, a countrj^ which is one vast com- 

 plicated series of mountain ranges, not indeed comparable 

 to the giants of the Himalayas in height, but nevertheless 

 of commanding altitude and even more extensive. 



It might be urged that there is nothing remarkable in 

 this similarity of floras, both of them alpine ; we would, 

 for example, expect dissimilarity between the alpine floras 

 of the Andes and Ruwenzori, or between those of the 

 New Zealand Alps and Kinabalu, but the Himalayas end, 

 geographically speaking, close to Western China and are 

 doubtless connected more or less closely with the Chinese 

 mountains. But the problem of distribution is not so 

 simple as it appears, and moreover there are other inti- 

 mately related problems which are scarcely explicable on 

 the assumption that the relationship betAveen the Hima- 

 layan and Chinese floras is the natural result of present 

 physiographical conditions. It might be, if these mountain 

 systems were actually in contact to-day ; but they are not, 

 as a glance at the map of S.E. Asia will show, being 

 breached along the China-Tibet and China- Burma frontier 

 by a number of parallel ranges cutting right across the 

 main axis of the great Asiatic divide. Even so it is less 

 the interpolation of the mountain ranges than the deep 

 arid valleys between them that prove such a stumbling- 



