140 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Oriental 

 species. 



Indian 



wild 



cotton. 



Wild 

 cotton of 

 Gujarat. 



especially along the outer margin. Fruit hardly exceeding the accrescent 

 bracteoles, ovate, suddenly acuminate, and beak often deflexed or hooked, 

 3-celled. Seeds very large, irregular, ovate rotund, with dense fuzz of rufous 

 or grey colour and with a sparse coating of coarse, rigid, reddish-white wool. 



Habitat. A distinctly Oriental species met with in India, 

 Ceylon, Malay Archipelago, but distributed to the Philippine Islands, 

 Africa, and Upper Egypt. 



The specimens from which the original description was made 

 were cultivated in the Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, from seed 

 obtained from Ceylon, of a plant reported to have been there wild. 

 No wild plant that could be supposed to correspond with this 

 species is, however, described or mentioned even in Linnaeus, ' Sp. PL' 

 or ' Fl. Zeyl.' ; in Burmann, ' Thes. Zeyl.' ; in Bheede, ' Hort. Mai.' ; 

 nor in Rumphius ' Amb.,' &c., &c. But curiously enough there is a 

 specimen in Linn. Herb, (the property of the Linnean Society of 

 London) that I take to be this very plant. (See photographic repro- 

 duction, Plate No. 19 A.) Lastly, Trimen says there is no indigenous 

 cotton in Ceylon. 



The plant which I here accept as having been described by 

 Roxburgh yields, however, the Surat, Broach, Kathiawar, and 

 Kumpta cottons the so-called long staples of Indian commerce. 

 It is, in other words, one of the stocks from which the best culti- 

 vated cottons of India and Africa have been derived, and is the 

 plant which, in the Linnean Herbarium (see Plate No. 21 A), 

 bears the name G. Tiirsutum, but is not the O. hirsutum, Linn., 

 Sp. PL (which see Plate No. 29 A). 



Citation of Specimens. I have in India repeatedly collected a wild or 

 self-sown Qossypium, and was, I believe, the first to definitely suggest its 

 identity with G. obtusifolium, Roxb. The particular plant to which I 

 refer occurs, for example, here and there all over Kathiawar. It literally 

 envelops the old fort of Junagardh and the subterranean Buddhist palaces 

 of that neighbourhood. It is common on the sacred Jaina hill of Falitana 

 growing among the indigenous scrubby vegetation, where, for some centuries 

 possibly, there has been no cultivation. It is fairly common in the hedges 

 of Gujarat (especially near Wankaner, Mangrol, and Ahmedabad, E.E.P., 

 nn. 1,733, 1,753, 1,772, 1,787, 1,788, 1,791, 1,887, 1,839, 1,884, &c. &c.), and 

 was found by me in Ehandesh and in the Deccan, especially near the 

 Buddhist cave temples of Elvira and Ajunta. If in all these instances it 

 has to be regarded as but a survival of former cultivation, there would seem 

 every likelihood that in some of its known habitats it has existed in that 

 condition for a great many years, perhaps centuries. Further, the plant is 

 easily recognised from all the other Indian cottons, though certain 

 states of G. Nanking come very near to it indeed, if such are not hybrids 



