260 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Frontis- 

 piece. 



Black- 

 seeded 

 cotton. 



Warted 

 branches. 



Lamarck's 

 position. 



One of the early pictures of the plant here accepted as G. viti* 

 folium, Lamk., (or G, barbadense, Linn.) is the beautiful illustration 

 given as the frontispiece to this work. It was painted by the great 

 floral artist G. D. Ehret, is in the possession of the British Museum, 

 and has been reproduced here by the kind permission of the Keeper 

 of the Herbarium, Dr. Alfred Barton Eendle. Ehret married Philip 

 Miller's sister, and it is thus highly likely that the plant sketched 

 was being grown in the Chelsea garden. There would seem little 

 doubt, in fact, that it represents one of the early stocks of the black- 

 seeded cottons of South America and the West Indies that attracted 

 attention prior to the discovery of the Sea Island stock. The painting 

 is on parchment, and bears the date of 1766. It is a work of art 

 to which the photographic reproduction (though admirable) does not 

 give full justice. The lower leaves are seen to be 3- to 5-lobed, 

 certain ones near the middle of the bush are ovate oblong, entire, 

 the uppermost 3-lobed, the lobes linear-oblong. The fruit is ovate, 

 4-valved, not the linear-oblong acuminate 3-valved fruit of G. brasi- 

 liense and G. barbadense, var. maritima. In fact, the drawing repre- 

 sents to some extent the condition of some of the longer staple 

 Upland cottons of the United States of America, and brings to mind 

 also some of the Egyptian cottons of to-day. 



Eumphius, who lays stress on the abundance of warts on the 

 petioles and veins, remarks that it is plentful around the houses in 

 Tamboek in the Eastern Celebes, and had been lately brought to 

 Amboina. 



Lamarck's diagnostic characters for this species are : leaves 

 palmate, like those of a vine, lobes 5, acute, uniglandular below, and the 

 bracteoles deeply toothed. That description would very possibly be 

 applicable to half the cultivated cottons of the world. He adds, 

 however, that the branches are almost glabrous ; the petioles covered 

 with tuberculed points ; the leaves deeply cut into 5 ovate-lan- 

 ceolate very pointed lobes, and glabrous below, with a gland on one 

 of the nerves; flowers large yellow with purplish claws. There 

 would seem little doubt that Lamarck was led to describe the leaves 

 as deeply 5-lobed, through his having accepted Plukenet's plate 

 188 f. 2 as exemplifying G. mtifolium. But he was not quite 

 certain of that synonym, and since there seems little doubt the figure 

 in question is G. brasiliense, it has to be excluded, thus leaving the 

 description less emphatically 5-lobed. The plant he described and 

 named grows, Lamarck tells us in the Celebes, is cultivated in the 



