296 The Flowering Plants of Western India. 



rounded by the enlarged leafy sepals. Beemashankar, Mira hills 

 and Canara (D.). * C. tiglium, leaves ovate serrate, flowers greenish- 

 yellow in racemes, stamens 15 to 20, capsule large oblong or obovoid, 

 S-cornered, jepdlyjamalgota, is the tree from which croton oil is pro- 

 duced ; it is attributed by G. to the S. Konkan, but by H. only to the 

 E. of India. 



" The familiar ' laurel ' of Bombay gardens, a shrub with green and 

 yellow leaves, is C. variegatum, a native of the Indian archipelago " 

 (Dr. G-ray). Many species and varieties of croton are now culti- 

 vated both in India and England as foliage plants. 



12. CHROZOPHORA. 



1. C. plicata. A tall handsome plant, all more or less rough 

 and mealy, leaves long-petioled, broad cordate, waved ; flowers 

 in racemes, very small red, petals elliptic, scaly on the outside, 

 hairy inside, ovary very large, capsule 3-sided. Suryavarta. 



Konkan, Deccan, and Guzerat. Throughout India (H.). The 

 leaves in shape and petiole are like those of scarlet geranium. 



2. C. prostrata. Prostrate, rough and hairy all over, some- 

 times woolly,' dark-coloured, with roundish leaves, much 

 wrinkled and blistered; flowers as 'in the last, with bright 

 yellow exserted stamens, capsule with styles and calyx per- 

 sistent. 



Poona, Found commonly in dried up water holes (D.). It is often 

 pressed close to the ground, and is thus in habit, as well as in some 

 details, as different as possible from the last, of which. H. has put it 

 us a variety. On sending a specimen to Kew the authority declared 

 it to be C. tinctoria, though he confessed to not seeing how it differed 

 from some large forms left by H. in C. plicata. C. tinctoria, which is 

 attributed by H. to Sind and the Deccan as well as the Punjaub, 

 he makes exceedingly like the larger states of C. plicata. The solu- 

 tion of the difficulty seems to be that they all three run into one 

 another. 



13. CLAOXYLON. 



* C. Mercurialis (Mictostachys m., D.). Annual, nearly 

 smooth, leaves ovate, sometimes cordat e serrate or crenate ; 

 racemes axillary solitary, few-flowered, stamens 3 to 10, or 

 very numerous in a round mass, capsule depressed, cocci 

 round. 



I do not know this, and D. gives no habitat. " Common in the 

 rains, much like Acalypha Indica, and both of them bearing a strong 

 resemblance to Mercurialis perennis, the English dog's mercury " (a 

 very common and unattractive plant of the early spring) (G.). 



