1916-17.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 173 



KEY TO THE SPECIES. 



Leaves oblong blunt with an apicular tip, surfaces mat. 

 Corolla red, tubular-canipanulate, glabrous outside, blotched 

 without spots. 

 Calyx glandular and gland-fimbriate. 



Corolla 5- or 7-lobed, puberulous inside. Stamens 10 

 or 12. Style glandular. 

 Ovary glandular. Pedicel 1 cm. or more glandular. 

 Petiole ghibrescent. 

 Stamens 10-12, pubescent. Inflorescence rhachis 

 rioccose and glandular. Stigma discoid. Leaf 

 with thin persistent under-leaf indumentum . agastwni 

 Calyx glabrous and Hock-fimbriate. 



Corolla 7-lobed, glabrous inside. Stamens 14. Style 

 glabrous. 

 Ovary glabrous. Pedicel under 1 cm. Hoccose 

 glabrescent. Petiole glabrous. 

 Stamens 14, glabrous. Inflorescence rhachis tloc- 

 cose. Stigma not discoid. Leaf without per- 

 sistent under-leaf indumentum . . . eriUmum 



This Irroratuin series appears to me to be a natural 

 phylum. That the forms of it which I present here re- 

 present all its members I do not for one moment suppose.^ 



' In the Kew Herbarium are three sheets which the Director of 

 Kew has kindly lent to me with others for examination. Their 

 tickets run : — 



1. Yunnan : — Mengtsz. Mountain glens. 6000-7000 ft. Flowers 



cream-coloured. Rare. Hancock. No. 179. 14th April 1895. 



2. Yunnan : — Mengtsz. N. mountains. 8000 ft. Tree 15-20 ft. 



Henry. No. 10,301. [In fruit.] 



3. Hort. Kew, iv, 07. No. 179/98. A. Henry. 



The three plants represented are in my view of the same species, and 

 the fact that the plant was in cultivation at Kew gives special interest 

 to the question — What is it ? The plant is now dead, the Director of 

 Kew tells me. 



Hemsley and Wilson * place Hancock's No. 179 and Henry's 10,301 

 in Rh. irroratum. They are not that species, although they belong to 

 the Irroratum series. The cultivated plant is correctly marked by Mr. 

 Hemsley as '-'aff. irroratum''' in the Kew Herbarium. Rehder and Wilson 

 in Plantae Wilsonianae, i (1913), 539 do not refer to these specimens. 

 The plant represented on these sheets awaits description, but I am not 

 to give it here because Hancock's specimen, the only native one with 

 flowers, is not quite adequate, unless it were sacrificed to the analysis. 

 I prefer not to use the cultivated specimen as a basis of description 

 until evidence is forthcoming by which to test the view of identity I 

 have stated. There is no doubt aljout its right to a place in the 

 Irroratum series. It is one of the minority of the series in its possession 

 of a style glandular throughout, and it has an axis of inflorescence about 

 1 "5 cm. long and puberulous, pedicels glandular with a few fioccose 

 hairs, corolla puberulous inside, stamens pubescent at base and 

 eglandular, disk appaiently glabrous, ovary glandular and slightly 

 fioccose — the flocks being very scarce in the cultivated plant. 



In Kew Bulletin (1910), 112. 



