OR OTHERWISE INTERESTING PLANTS. 55 
though I do not remember ever seeing it in Hongkong. But though 
not unfrequent, it is certainly rare to find other than barren specimens. 
It adheres to the faces of rocks, and the sides of the Q-shaped Chinese 
tombs, but scarcely any flowers, because, apparently, there is not in 
such localities sufficient space for its development. Hence, I had for 
years been tantalized by the fruitless search for receptacles, though the 
plant itself was not difficult to find. The sterile branches invariably 
produce only small leaves (6—12 lin. long), for both the plants under 
consideration have “folia dimorpha;" but when it secures sufficient 
space, the flowering branches with their large leaves (3—4 poll. long) 
are plentifully developed, and the plant produces figs in abundance. 
These are of a roundish-turbinate form, about 22 in. long, quite flattened 
and sericeous at the top, with a protuberant umbo. I have at Macao 
seen old walls covered with this plant, climbing upwards of 30 feet 
high, and extending indefinitely in a lateral direction, the branches 
adhering to the stone like our Ivy in Europe, and so loaded with figs 
that I could easily gather forty or fifty good specimens in a few 
minutes, with the help of aladder. I have had the pleasure of sending 
specimens to different European herbaria. [It has frequently flowered 
in the garden of Herrenhausen, Hanover.—Epiror.] The Fig, I 
should add, is not edible, or at least, so far as I can discover, not 
eaten, but is sold in the Chinese herbalists’ shops, amongst the very 
indiscriminate constituents of the Celestial ‘ Materia Medica Vegeta- ` 
bilis, and is used as an external emollient application to painful 
hzemorrhoidal tumours. 
P. pumila Y have never seen alive, but I possess a specimen of 
Japanese origin, which I may undoubtedly consider authentic, since it 
was given me by Professor Miquel from the Leyden herbarium. 
species is apparently quite undistinguishable in foliage from F. stipulata, 
but may be at once known by its ovoid fruit, scarcely more than an 
inch long, strikingly different, therefore, in size and shape. Mr: 
Swinhoe has sent me a plant which I cannot but refer to this species, 
gathered at Takow, in the islaud of Formosa, which differs only, in 
the dried state, from that of Professor Miquel by its rather more 
elliptic syconus. Mr. Swinhoe informs me that the Fig is called by the _ 
Chinese in Formosa Aw-keo-tsang, and is eaten with sugar after being 
soaked in water. Endlicher also (Enchir. Bot. 166) enumerates F. 
pumila amongst the esculent species ; whilst, on the other hand, Thun- 
