SECTION II: VAR. HIMALAYANA 125 



but the shape of the leaves with long tapering lobes, especially when viewed 

 in the light of the other characters detailed under G. Nanking, leaves no 

 room for doubt that this plant should be looked upon as a somewhat remark- 

 able Indian representative of the large and distinct series of cultivated 

 plants derived from G. Nanking, but which through hybridisation now 

 almost stand between G. herbacewm and G. arboreum. Moreover, the 

 twigs, leaf-stalks, and peduncles are, for the size of the plant, slender, 

 round, and purple-coloured, and in mature structures almost glabrous. So 

 also in rare instances the flowers are purple (as, for example, in Falconer's 

 Kashmir specimen, n. 287), and it then becomes difficult to separate this 

 plant from var. rubicunda. In the Himalayan form the capsule is usually 

 considerably elongated and very acuminate (f. 3), and the seeds coated with 

 greyish-brown velvet (f. 4), below the somewhat silky floss. 



Habitat. This is one of the chief forms grown along the Hima- Himalaya 

 laya and on some of the lower hills of India proper, where it is tralAsia. 

 generally called bagar or watni cotton. It is to a large extent the 

 cotton plant of Central Asia (being close to the Transcaucasian and 

 Korean plants above mentioned), and was the form very possibly 

 seen by Marco Polo in Yarkand, and long subsequently by Henderson. 

 Occasionally it is replaced as a field crop on the plains of Northern 

 and Eastern India by G. arboreum, var. sanguinea or by the next, 

 variety rubicunda, and in Gujarat, the Deccan, and South India by the 

 roji and nadam cottons. It seems probable that the Chinese and 

 Japanese forms yield superior staples to any of the Indian repre- 

 sentatives ; on this account, and because the true G. Nanking has 

 repeatedly been introduced into India (see the passage from Box- 

 burgh), it seems desirable to separate the Indian from the Chinese 

 plant. 



Citation of Specimens. The following specimens may be mentioned as gp ec i- 

 typical and as manifesting the distribution of this plant : INDIA : T. Thorn- mens. 

 son, Kashmir, cultivated at 5,000 feet in altitude, also another plant in the 

 Herb. Ind. Or. Hook., f. and T. Thomson, from the Nilghiri hills (Mad. Red- 

 No. 18); Falconer, Kashmir, No. 287, has small red flowers, and thus flowered 

 approximates to var. rubicunda (cf. p. 117) ; Aitchison, n. 462, collected at race ' 

 Thai, west of Kuram (alt. 4,000 feet), and Aitchison, n. 46, Jhelum ; Falconer, 

 Panjab, n. 288 ; Thomson, Lahore (1846) ; and herb. Bottler named ' G. 

 mauritianumS But as admirable examples of the ordinary Himalayan state 

 of this plant, I may quote Duthie n. 19,261 from Hazara ; Lace n. 1836 from 

 Chamba, as also my own nn. 9776, 7990, 10,210, and 13,449, collected from 

 fields north of Simla at altitudes of 5,000 feet, and Mr. Gammie's Kashmir 

 plants, as also the Yarkand Expedition specimens procured by Henderson 

 (1870). On the other hand, Thomson's sample from the banks of the 

 Chenab (1846) comes very close to the nadani cottons of Madras, and 

 Griffith's Bhutan plant seems a hybrid approaching var. neglecta. It would 

 appear highly probable that the Persian cultivated plant mentioned by 



