116 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Never 

 seen wild 



Chinese 

 speci- 

 mens. 



broad, unequal, one oblique and toothed, the other narrow linear ; petiole as 

 long as the blade. Inflorescence mostly solitary axillary flowers, which 

 occasionally only are borne on jointed peduncles ; bracteoles ovate-oblong, 

 deeply cordate auriculate, often fully one-half the length of the corolla. 

 Calyx wide and loose, campanulate, with the month not at all toothed; 

 interior glands large, triangular, hairy, alternating with and placed within the 

 bracteoles. Capsule somewhat angled, ovate-acuminate, 3- or 4-celled. 

 Seeds large, irregular, densely coated with rufous velvet, and bearing a 

 good silky floss, which, in all the better examples, is white, but it manifests 

 a strong tendency to become red, or Tthaki coloured. 



Habitat. Cultivated in China, Japan, the Malaya, Siam, Burma, 

 India, the North-west Himalaya, Persia, Central Asia, to the 

 Celebes ; less abundantly in Madagascar, Arabia and Africa. No 

 person has recorded the discovery of the wild state of this protean 

 plant, and yet the characteristics detailed are so constant with 

 many of the cottons, within a large part of the areas indicated, 

 that, in dealing with cultivated plants, geographical and agricultural 

 considerations cannot be disregarded. In other words, the separa- 

 tion of the assemblage, from G. herbaceum, G. arboreum, and 

 G. obtusifolium, not only meets a commercial necessity, but coincides 

 with many historic facts of importance. 



Citation of Specimens. The following are some of the more striking 

 examples of the typical condition seen in Herbaria : Among the Kew sheets 

 from CHINA are those collected by Dr. S. W. Bushell (1868-71) near Peking 

 (G. herbaceum of ' Index Fl. Sin.') ; Eev. Ernst Faber, from Yangtze-kiang, 

 n. 580 (1887) ; Dr. Bretschneider, n. 110, from Peking (G. herbacewm, var. ? 

 of ' Index Fl. Sin.') (seeds almost naked and black, a hybrid very possibly) ; 

 a specimen from the Herb. Mus., Paris (collected by M. 1'Abbe* Delavay in 

 Yunnan) ; Dr. A. Henry's (a) Yunnan, n. 11,024 ; and (b) Formosa, n. 1899 

 (a poor quality). From JAPAN there are two Yokohama sheets, on one of 

 which Oldham writes that it is largely cultivated on low, level, sheltered 

 ground; the other from Maximowicz ('Herb. Hort. Bot. Petrop.,' 1862, 

 named G. herbaceum, cult.) ; a third is also from Oldham n. 107, collected 

 in 1862 at Nagasaki. It may, in fact, be observed that the majority 

 of the specimens of Chinese and Japanese cotton, preserved in herbaria, are 

 this plant, though these are mostly named G. herbaceum. An excellent 

 example (and manifesting the link of connection that subsists between 

 the Chinese and Indian areas) is Dr. Henderson's n. 1072, collected at 

 Yarkand. 



Among the British Museum sheets the following are specially interest- 

 ing: Sloane Herb. (Pluk.), vol. 93, f. 185, collected by Cuninghame in 

 (?) CHINA three specimens on the sheet, viz. (a) Nanking, (b) rubicunda, 

 and (c) arboreum, but named paretty, and may also be var. rubicunda; 

 (Pluk.), vol. 96, f. 62, = the type of Phyt., t. 299, f. 1 (see PI. No. 15 A), 

 locality ? ; (Camel), vol. 240, f. 39, dated 1700 ; in the general collection 

 there are : Shanghai, 1852, Fortune, typical form, n. 66 ; Kinkiang, Forbes, 

 nn. 101, 139. 



