SECTION IV: G. PURPURASCENS 253 



Nomenclature. The separation of the present species from G. Cultivated 

 taitense is doubtless a matter of considerable uncertainty; all the states> 

 wild or fully acclimatised forms would be that plant and the culti- 

 vated or recently cultivated ones the present species, while the more 

 highly developed forms would merge into G. mexicanum. That the 

 Bourbon cottons are cultivated plants, derived from G. taitense, 

 ParL, there would seem no doubt, and it is certainly significant 

 that when met with in Polynesia, they uniformly manifest the 

 distinctive features assigned above to G. taitense. The assemblage 

 of cultivated forms bears in its relation to that species an almost 

 exactly parallel position to that which the series known under the 

 name G. hirsutum (the New Orleans cottons) bears to G. punctatum, 

 Sch. et Thon. (G. jamaicense, Mac/.). 



I may not be correct in placing G. racemosum, Poir., as a synonym 

 for the present species, but it came from Porto Eico, where examples 

 of the true G. purpurascens have been repeatedly collected. It may 

 also be added that from that island have come in addition examples 

 of a plant slightly different from what I take to be the type condition 

 of G. purpurascens. It is just possible, therefore, that these may be 

 the G. racemosum, Poir. For example, the specimens collected by 

 Sintenis are distinctly peculiar. The leaf-stalks are pale pink and 

 the flowers very small and numerous. It is spoken of as found in 

 the forests along the seashore, from which circumstance it may have 

 been wild. There are good examples of the plant in question both in The 

 the British Museum and Kew Herbaria, as well as in M. Casimir C0 tt n. 

 de Candolle's great and historic Herbarium at Geneva. The name 

 racemosum was given apparently to meet the circumstance not un- 

 common with wild species of Gossypium, namely the persistence of 

 lateral flowering shoots thus simulating a false condition of racemose 

 inflorescence. Todaro was in error when he placed this plant under 

 his subsection Synspermia and figured the seeds as naked and 

 kidneyed. That mistake was possibly originated through the present 

 plant having incorrectly been called G. religiosum by certain writers, 

 and thus confused with the G. religiosum of others, which was un- 

 doubtedly G. brasiliense the kidney cotton. There is just the pro- 

 bability also that the suggestion made by Poiret that Eohr's Porto 

 Eico cotton was the present species caused the error, for Eohr makes 

 it quite clear that his plant had fuzzy seeds united into a pyramidal 

 column, thus G. microcarpum, Tod. 



Some specimens examined by me cannot be separated from 



