SECTION II: AFRICAN TREE COTTON 91 



that, with the present species, this may have been a far less potent 

 agency than is generally supposed. 



At the same time it is quite true that many of the races of p 1 " natio 



influences, 

 G. arboreum are immediately influenced or modified by altered 



conditions of climate, soil, and methods of cultivation. This, of 

 course, is true of all cottons, but more especially so of the particular 

 group of forms here dealt with, where the prepotency of G. arboreum 

 seems so very strong. The range of variation within the series is 

 remarkable. Without affirming whether these are varieties, races, or 

 hybrids, the writer would mention, as indicative of the assemblage, 

 the plants that have come to bear the names of G, sanguineum, 

 Hassk., and G. neglectum, Tod. ; but there are others, many of which 

 have not received botanical names, though none the less referable to 

 the series and equally worthy of notice. 



The more typical and representative members have in India, from 

 time immemorial, been known by the collective vernacular name of 

 Nurma. They are, as a rule, small ornamental trees or large shrubs 

 grown in gardens. The fine red-flowered field cotton, so much Nurma. 

 extolled by early writers, may have been G, rubicundum, Roxb. (a plant Bed- 

 presently to be described). But it may in passing be here mentioned 



that a specimen of it is number two in the Linnean herbarium and plant, 

 bears in Linnaeus' own handwriting the name prcestantissimum. (See 

 Plate No. 17 A.) He has nowhere defined that species, and the 

 suspicion of an error suggests the question, could he have confused 

 this with Tournefort's Xylon Americanum prcestantissimum semine 

 virescente which Philip Miller and after him Linnaeus himself 

 accepted, for a time at least, as part of the description of the plant 

 now known as G. hirsutum ? (See Plate No. 29 A.) If that suspicion 

 be correct, it once more shows how hopelessly the ' Species Plantarum ' 

 is at variance with the plants actually known to the great author 

 himself. The following are some of the more remarkable varieties or 

 cultivated races of G. arboreum : 



11. Var. sanguinea, Watt : G. s ANGUINE UM, Hassk., Cat. Hort. 

 Bog. p. 200 ; G. PUNICEUM, Jacq., Eclogce PL Bar. 1844, n., p. 7. 

 t. 134 (is a red-flotvered cotton, country unknown) ; Todaro, Eelaz. 

 Cult, dei Cot. 1877-78, 179, 1. 1. 



A red-flowered field cotton. Bed- 



This form is apparently only rarely met with in India. There flowered 



field crop, 

 are in India, however, several distinct races of red-flowered field 



