SECTION II : G. HERBACEUM 157 



with large glands (f. 3). Capsule 4-5-valved. Seeds large, angled, 

 beaked, coated with grey fuzz and harsh greyish-white wool. (See 

 Plates Nos. 24 and 25. 



Linnaeus' description, ' foliis quinquelolis, caule herbaceo lezvis, ' is Descrip- 

 applicable to this species, of course, but equally so to a great many other ^ on< 

 widely different plants. The species as accepted above might be more fully 

 described as follows : A small bush often not more than one to two feet in 

 height, stems and branches round, faintly striated, bent slightly at the joints, 

 reddish brown, minutely warted, sparsely hairy, with long, shaggy, white 

 hairs, and, below these, short stellate pubescence, becoming glabrous, or 

 nearly so, with maturity. Leaves ovate, almost sub-reniform in outline, 

 deeply cordate, auriculate, and expanding into the petiole ; texture compact, 

 leathery, smooth, thin, drying in the herbarium into a pale yellow-green, 

 5- to 7-lobed ; lobes nearly as broad as long, ovate or almost rotund, nearly 

 glabrous above, or only very minutely stellately pilose, below distinctly 

 pilose, especially along the veins and margins ; veins very prominent below, 

 almost winged, and thus forming a web-footed structure, which is pink- 

 coloured and semi-glandular, just within the prolongation of the blade into 

 the petiole ; petiole very long, and, like the peduncles, round, dark red, with 

 a few spreading silky hairs ; stipules on the stem awl-shaped, one-nerved, 

 on the peduncles larger, one much broader than the other, toothed, and 

 3-5 -nerved. Inflorescence lateral shoots that usually bear at most two 

 flowers, often not half the length of the petioles, at other tunes even longer ; 

 pedicels very short, usually shorter than the bracteoles. Flowers hardly 

 twice the bracteoles, hairy on the outside, especially near the tube. Calyx 

 large, loose around the ovary, undulate, or with short rounded teeth, many- 

 veined, gland-dotted, glabrous, with bracteoles adherent near the bottom of 

 the tube. Fruit ovoid, beaked, deeply gland-pitted, 4-celled. 



Habitat. Probably indigenous to North Arabia and Asia Minor Herba- 

 (and possibly also Upper Egypt and Abyssinia). Not known to exist cotton, 

 as a wild species anywhere, but in cultivation is distinctly accidental. 

 It occurs in the Mediterranean regions (Spain, Sicily, Malta, Greece, 

 Crete, Cyprus, Algiers, Turkey), in Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, 

 Persia, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province 

 of India, and the Northern portions of the cotton area of the United 

 States of America. Poiret speaks of it as the ' herbaceous cotton of 

 Malta,' and thinks that it originated in Upper Egypt. This view 

 is also held by Eawlinson (' Hist. Ancient Egypt,' i. 1881, p. 63), Egypt. 

 and by Joret ('Les PI. dans L'Antiq. et au Moyen Age.,' 1897, 

 pp. 43-44). Joret in fact accepts Virgil, Pliny and Pollux as 

 establishing that fact. The passage in Virgil is a poetic imagery, 

 and the authority of the other authors would seem to rest on 

 interpolations on their original text made centuries later than their 

 dates. (Cf. Yates, ' Text. Anti. App.,' pp. 467-72.) If I am correct 



