SECTION II: GUJARAT HERBACEOUS COTTON 139 



to persons who have not a personal acquaintance with the living 

 plants. To the cultivators of India, China, and Africa they are, 

 however, of considerable value. 



As varieties and races of G. Nanking have to be classed all the 

 yellow-flowered perennial plants with thick leathery leaves (often 

 possessed of three glands), and which have small, thick, sparsely- 

 toothed bracteoles. 



22. G. OBTUSIFOLIUM, Roscb., FL Ind. (1832), vol. in. 183; 

 Tod., Eel Cult, del Cot., 1877-8, 129-30 ; G. HEEBACEUM, 

 Aliotta, Bw. Grit. Gen. Goss., 1903, 67; G. OBTUSIFOLIUM, 

 Boxb. (in part}, I. H. Burkill in Mem. Dept. Agri. Ind., vol. i. 

 No. 4. (Cf. G. Nanking, p. 117.) 



A shrubby, very ramous plant, with small leaves, having three, Descrip- 

 rarely five, obtuse entire lobes, stipules falcate ; bracteoles entire ; lon ' 

 capsule ovate, cells 3-seeded ; seeds free, clothed with firmly 

 adhering short, greenish-grey down under a small portion of ash- 

 coloured wool. A native of Ceylon, but not cultivated. Flowered 

 during the rains and cold season in the Botanic Gardens at Calcutta 

 (see Plates Nos. 19 and 20). 



It may now be useful to furnish a detailed description of this wild (or 

 long acclimatised) plant: Stem slender, branches round, brownish-red, 

 glabrous below, but above clothed in minute, soft, stellate hairs that become 

 almost spreading on the leaf-stalks ; leaves thin, smooth, compact in texture, 

 drying in the herbarium into an ashy-green colour, minutely reticulate with 

 small dots within the meshes, sparsely and minutely stellately pilose, 

 especially on the veins ; 1 to If inch long and nearly as broad, mostly 

 5-lobed (occasionally only 3-lobed), lobes almost obovate oblong, very slightly 

 constricted below into the sinus but suddenly and minutely bristle-tipped 

 or emarginate, base cordate but scarcely auriculate, one obscure gland on 

 the lower third of the central vein; petiole 1 to 1 inch long, slender, 

 ascending, often almost woolly and pink-coloured or sub-glandular at the 

 insertion within the blade ; stipules minute, awl-shaped, caducous. Inflor- 

 escence strictly axillary, slender lateral shoots, with the common peduncle 

 1 to 2 inches long and bearing one or two small, usually 3-lobed, leaves, 

 pedicel very short, sometimes only inch long; bracteoles united to each 

 other only very slightly, say th inch, but firmly adherent to the base of the 

 calyx tube, not very profoundly cordate, thick, ovate acute, almost entire 

 or coarsely toothed, prominently veined and reticulated, also gland-dotted 

 and very minutely stellately hairy. Calyx irregularly 5-toothed, teeth large, 

 rounded, and three glands at its base within the upturned and united 

 margins of the bracteoles. Corolla with short tube and petals only very 

 slightly attached, limbs wide-spreading, making the flower convolvulate, 

 with the petals rotating to right, bright yellow with dark purple, very large 

 spots on the claws and purple tinge on passing maturity, hairy outside, 



