SECTION II: G. ARBOREUM 81 



in a more complete state of cultivation, and become more widely 

 diversified racially, than is the case in any part of Southern Asia. 

 While that is so, the crosses between G. obtusifolium and G. arboreum 

 constitute by far the most abundantly cultivated forms of Asiatic 

 cotton. 



Lastly, the great cotton of Central and Eastern Asia (a plant Chinese 

 which extends from the shores of the Caspian to China and Japan, cotton - 

 and is distributed southwards to certain tracts of India, Burma, 

 Siam, and the East India Islands) may be said to be G. Nanking. 

 This, after G. obtusifolium, is the next most important cultivated 

 cotton in Asia. In fact the two plants have been so much inter-bred 

 that it is often a matter of considerable difficulty to separate them 

 though the extreme (or pure) types are readily enough distinguished 

 and constitute highly characteristic plants in the chief centres in 

 which they are produced. No botanist has as yet recorded the 

 discovery of G. Nanking (no more than of G. herbaceum) in a truly 

 wild (indigenous) condition, but the cultivated or field ' tree cottons ' 

 of the early European explorers in Asia would seem almost invariably 

 to have been the present species. 



It was not until well into the seventeenth century that we pos- New 

 sessed any trustworthy evidence of the Asiatic cottons having been World - 

 carried to the New World. The Levant cotton (G. herbaceum) was 

 the first to be taken to the United States and grown in Virginia. 

 The Indian cottons (G. obtusifolium, various races) were conveyed to 

 the States by the East India Company and the Chinese and Siamese 

 cotton (G. Nanking) was carried by the French colonists to Louisiana 

 about 1758. G. arboreum proper does not seem to have been 

 successfully acclimatised anywhere in the New World, though the 

 most important Asiatic (? hybrid) form derived from that species 

 (G, arboreum, var. neglecta) was early carried to America and the 

 West Indies by the East India Company, and is known in the United 

 States to-day under the name of ' Okra ' cotton. 



10. GOSSYPIUM AEBOREUM, Linn., Sp. PL 1st ed. (1753), n., 693 

 (excl. syn. Rheede); 2nd ed. (1763) (excl. syn. Rumphius) n., 959 ; 

 4th ed. (Willd.), 1800, n., PL i., 804 ; Prosper Alpinus, De PL 

 ^gypt. (1592)2?. et t. 29, also 1640, t. 71, ed. by Vesling; Plukenet, 

 Aim. Bot. (1696), 172, t. 188, /. 3 (see Plate No. 7, f. B); XYLON 

 ARBOREUM, Boerhaave, Index PLHort. Acad.Lugd.-Batav. (1720) 

 i., 273; G. ARBOREUM, Linn., Hort. Cliff, (in part], 1737, 350; 



G 



