1914-15.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 307 



The plant (Plate XXVII) was found again on 17th May 

 1881 by Sir George Watt at an elevation of 10,000 feet on 

 the outer spur of Sandukfu in Southern Sikkim (Watt, No- 

 5307 ). Sir George Watt gave it the field name of P. Rober- 

 tiana, Watt, "intended to indicate the peculiar smell being 

 identical with that of Geranium Robert ian urn." This 

 character of odour deserves attention because no collector 

 speaks of a similar odour as marking any plant of true 

 P. obconica, Hance. 



The Sikkim P. Lister i, King, is a small, more or less 

 pubescent and glabrescent multicipital perennial clothed all 

 over with long thin white hairs, and it has a woody rooting 

 rhizome. From the crown proceeds a cluster of petiolate 

 leaves — some with long vaginate petioles, others with 

 shorter ones — of which the lamina may be described in 

 general terms as ivy-like. Its shape is of that type. 

 Cordate at base with the lobes overlapping, it spreads out 

 in a rotundate or orbicular fashion and becomes five to 

 seven lobed ; each of the lobes is more or less denticulate. 

 The scapes, more or less fragile, several of which arise in 

 the leaf cluster, are short — shorter than, or equalling in 

 length, the petioles and therefore immersed in the leaves, — 

 and each bears an umbel of two to four flowers which open 

 successively. The pedicels are quite short — a centimeter 

 or less long — and are sometimes deflexed so that the flower 

 becomes half nodding. Each flower has a cup-bell-shaped 

 calyx with conspicuous broad triangular lobes a third as 

 long as the tube. The corolla-tube is stout and little 

 longer than the calyx, or twice its length, and has no 

 annulus. The small limb has a spread of about one centi- 

 meter, its lobe being obcordate and emarginate. In fruit 

 the calyx is accrescent to twice the flowering size, and the 

 capsule is quite flat on top. 



The vestiture of hairs : the petioles are clad not densely 

 with long white hairs but are glabrescent. The lamina 

 on the under side, which is slightly paler than the upper 

 side, is glabrous, having as a rule neither long hairs on the 

 veins nor short hairs over the rest of the surface, but 

 there may be some few hairs on the veins. On the other 



corolla-tube outside, and mouth pubescent. Whole plant smelling like 

 Geranium Robertianum (Watt)." 



