SECTION III.: YUCATAN WILD COTTON 207 



almost quite free, auricled, cut into nine to eleven broad linear suddenly 

 tailed teeth. Flowers medium-sized, yellow tinged with purple ; calyx cup- 

 shaped, with five triangular teeth ; corolla one-third longer than the bracteoles. 

 Fruit 8-celled, almost globose, with a short pointed beak ; seeds large, 

 irregular, coated with coarse rufous coloured fuzz and scanty supply of 

 inferior reddish wool. In one specimen grown in the Botanic Gardens, 

 Calcutta, the wool is fairly abundant and silky and of a rich red colour. 



Habitat. Collected at Merida in Yucatan. Yucatan. 



Citation of Specimens. Yucatan, Schott, collected in 1865, n. 602 ; Speci- 

 Paraguay, Hassler, n. 484, collected in 1897. These specimens are in the mens. 

 British Museum, but from the Calcutta Herbarium I have been shown a 

 specimen of this little known plant which is said by Kurz to have been 

 grown in the Eoyal Botanic Gardens. 



Nomenclature. I may not be correct in treating G. pubescens, 

 Schum., as a synonym for this species. It is, however, in that case 

 still another member of the present sub-group of fuzzy seeded cottons. 

 The entire calyx, dark purple corolla and brownish fuzz, would carry it 

 nearer to G. Schottii than to G. microcarpum, though it is probably 

 an intermediate form, hence I have not ventured to give Brazil as 

 a habitat for either of the plants here mentioned. Hassler's specimen 

 from Paraguay might almost be spoken of as giving the link of 

 transition into G. microcarpum, though it is distinctly nearer to 

 G. Schottii. Similarly the specimen in the Calcutta Herbarium 

 affords the transition into the glabrous G. Palmerii. My chief 

 purpose is, however, served by drawing attention to what stands 

 every chance of being a Brazilian member of this curiously interesting 

 series of cottons. Stephens (' Eambles in Yucatan ') speaks of wild 

 cotton plants. 



G. Schottii as defined by me above must of necessity be a wild 

 plant, since its inferior grade and low yield of wool would never 

 justify its cultivation. It, however, matches sufficiently closely a King's 

 hybrid found in a field of King's Improved cotton at Eichmond, Va. t ?!j ve< 

 (recently sent to me by Mr. Lyster H. Dewey of the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry in the United States of America), as to countenance the belief 

 that the so-called sport in question may have originated through the 

 hybridisation of G. punctatum or of G. hirsutum with the present 

 species. The specimen came to me under the vernacular name of 

 okra a name that it will be recollected had on a former occasion Okra 

 been given to an American sample of G. arboreum, var. neglecta. It cotton - 

 is suggestive of the West Indian name ochro (Hibiscus esculentus) 

 and possibly thus denotes the deeply dissected condition of the 



