Till 



INDO-MALAYAN SPECIES 



OF 



QUERCUS AND CASTANOPSIS. 



BY 



GEORGE KIXG, M.B., LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., 

 Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, 



Having found by experience how difficult it is to distinguish from descriptions 

 alone— however excellent they may be— the species of Quercus and Castanopsis indigenous 

 to South Eastern Asia, I was led some years ago to examine the type specimens of 

 all the published species, to have a drawing made of each, and in fact to work up 

 the species of both genera critically. Learning from Sir Joseph Hooker, the distinguished 

 editor of the Flora of British India, that the publication of the results of my studies might 

 be of some use, I now venture to give them to the botanical public. In treating 

 the species of Quercus, I follow the sectional arrangement originated for the most part 

 by M. Alphonse De Candolle, and adopted by the late Mr. Bentham and Sir Joseph Hooker 

 in their invaluable Genera Plantarum. The species included in the first and largest of these 

 sections {Lepidobalanus) are chiefly American and European, only a small proportion of the 

 183 described by M. Alphonse De Candolle in the Prodromus (vol. xvi. pt. 2) being Asiatic. 

 The second section (Cyclobalanopsis) was originally formed by Oersted to include the species in 

 which, with the zonate cupules of Cyclobalanus, there are associated the pendent male catkins 

 of Lepidobalanus. The members of this group are all Asiatic, one at least of them ( Q. glauca) 

 having a wide distribution from Japan to the North-Western Himalaya, some being confined 

 to Japan or China, the remainder being Indo-Malayan. Of the third group (Pasania) only 



one is 



American, some are Japanese and Chinese, but the majority are Indo-Malav 



Ann. Roy. Bot. Gard. Calcutta, V 



