PENGHAWAR DJAMBI. 121 



has for some years past been in the hands of the pharmacists 1856 - 

 of Holland and Germany, and now has even a place in the 

 Dutch pharmacopoeia. 1 



The plant which affords it is without doubt of the genus Plant yielding 

 Cibotium. Dr. Oudemans, in his Commentaries on the PJiarma- 

 copoea Neerlandica, 2 refers it to C. Cumingii Kunze, a fern of 

 the Philippine Islands, regarded by one of our best filicologists 

 as not specifically distinct from the C. Barometz of J. Smith. On 

 this point Mr. John Smith has been kind enough to reply to 

 some inquiries I recently addressed to him, in a communication 

 from which I extract the following : 



" I may safely say that the hairy stipes called Penghawar Mr. John 

 Jambi are produced by a species of Cibotium. Of this genus, Smith, 

 six species are described in Sir W. Hooker's Species Filicum, 3 

 viz., G. glaucescens, Kze. (Polypodium Barometz, L., Cibotium 

 Barometz, J. Sm.) and C. Assamicum, Hook., from the Eastern 

 hemisphere ; C. Scliiedei, Schlecht. et Cham., from Mexico ; and 

 C. glaucum (Dicksonia glauca, Smith in Eee's Cyclop.), C. 

 Cliamissoi, Kaulf. and C. Menziesii, Hook., from the Sandwich 

 Islands. All are characterised by having the rhizome or 

 caudex and the base of the stipes densely covered with soft 

 moniliform hairs. In the Eastern species, the rhizome is 

 decumbent, and upon removal from the ground, might easily be 

 formed by a little artful manipulation into the fabulous Vegetable 

 Lamb or Barometz. The plant which affords its production was 

 referred by Linnseus, from Loureiro's description, 4 to the genus 

 Polypodium, and called P. Barometz. Nothing further was 

 known of it till about thirty years ago, when the late John 

 Eeeves, Esq., sent a living plant from China to the nursery of 

 Messrs. Loddiges at Hackney, as the true Barometz. This plant 

 increased and in time became an inhabitant of other gardens ; it 

 was not, however, till 1840 that it produced fructification, which 

 it did in the Birmingham Botanic Garden, a notice of which is 

 recorded in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society for February 

 1840. I then identified it as belonging to the genus Cibotium 



1 Pharmacopoei Neerlandica, 1851, p. 53. 



3 Aanteekeningen op het Botanische, Zoologische en Pharmacognostische 

 Gedeelte der Pharmacopoea Neerlandica. Door C. A. J. A. Oudemans M D., 

 Rotterdam, 1854, 1. An. p. 17. 



3 Page 82. 



4 Flora Cochinchinensis. Ed. Willd., p. 829. 



