DESCRIPTIONS 
OF 
NEW AND RARE INDIAN PLANTS. 
٢ 
7 
SOME NEW OR CRITICAL RANUNCULACEAE FROM INDIA AND ADJACENT REGIONS. — 
By Paul Brühl. 
PLATES 102 ro 128. 
Or the Ranunculacez figured in plates 102 to 128, only one, Coptis ospriocarpa, is 
an undoubtedly new species. Others are forms sufficiently distinct to claim for them the 
rank of species of the second order; but the cornecting links between them and 
species already known having been clearly traced, the writer thinks it preferable to 
emphasize the want of complete independence by enumerating and defining them expli- 
citly as subspecies. Still others, like Aconitum gymnandrum, Maxim., or Adonis brevisty la, 
Franchet, themselves discovered comparatively recently, were not known before to occur in 
the tracts of country which are legitimately included in India as a botanico-geographical 
region. A fourth group is made up of some species which, from want of material, have 
been hitherto identified with species to which they undoubtedly do not belong. Finally, 
some of the plants have been figured here, because they have either never been figured 
before or, if so and in any case, because they invite, for some reason or other, the 
special attention of botanists. A connected account of the Indian Ranunculacee wil] 
appear shortly in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, part ii, as a sequel to the 
author's Disputatio de Aquilegia: it will therefore be sufficient here to refer only to those 
species which are figured in the accompanying plates, although a number of other 
species, like those of Jsopyrum or several species of Clematis and Ranunculus, would form 
interesting: subjects for discussion. The writer cannot conclude these introductory 
remarks without alluding to the great disadvantage which he has felt repeatedly whilst 
engaged in his researches in Himalayan botany which rises from the fact that there 
аге a number of species—Ranunculus chaerophylios, Linn., for instance—the synonymy of 
which is yet involved in some doubt. These doubts could, most of them, be definitelv 
cleared up, if some of the European botanical societies would undertake the task of 
forming complete herbaria of the tracts in which such veterans as Caspar Bauhin, 
Gouan, Guettard, Lespeyres, and others botanized. Finally, two problems may be 
referred to as worthy of the attention of Indian botanists: the tracing of the 
connection between the flora of the North-Western Himalaya and that of the Elburz 
_ and the Caucasus; and the establishment of the affinities which link the flora of the 
Central, and still more that of the Eastern Himalaya, to that of Japan. The obstacles 
in, the way of a satisfactory solution of these problems aie the scarcity of Caucasian, 
Axx. Roy. Bor. Garp. Catc., Vor. V. 
