EUSYCE. 



125 



Indigenous in Japan and China: frequently cultivated against walls and other 

 buildings in all parts of the plains of India. This species produces receptacles freely 

 in the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, where the rather untidy fruiting-branches are allowed to 

 grow freely. In most other Indian gardens these fruiting-branches are trimmed off, 

 and receptacles are therefore never seen. Considerable confusion has arisen in the 

 nomenclature of this plant from the dimorphism of its leaves. Its synonymy has been 

 very carefully disentangled by Maximowicz in an excellent paper in vol. xi of the 

 Bulletin of the St. Petersburg Academy, and, in treating it, I have to a great extent 

 followed this author. 



In the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, the perianth of the male flowers consists invariably 

 of two pieces. Japanese specimens, however, have a 3-leaved male perianth. In 

 Calcutta the receptacles produced are all of one kind, containing males which, although of 

 enormous size, produce no good pollen, and galls which attain but small size and are 

 never attacked by insects. Fruiting specimens from the countries where the species is 

 indigenous are not common in collections, and I have not been able to obtain many 

 receptacles from such for dissection; but the few which I have succeeded in getting all 

 contained 3-androus male and gall flowers. I have met no receptacle containing fertile 



female flowers. 



Plate 158. — F. pumila y Linn. A : fruiting-branch with a mature receptacle. B : 



barren branch. 1, apex of a receptacle; 2, vertical section showing arrangement of the 



flowers ; 3, stipules — of natural size ; 4, group of male flowers ; 5, single male flower with 

 the stamens separated: 6, vertical section of 2-androus male flower, showing the natural 

 position of the stamens and perianth leaves; 7, undeveloped gall flower (the above are 



all from specimens grown in Calcutta) ; 8, male flower, and 9, gall flower— from Jap 

 specimens: all enlarged. 



t 



145. Ficus Thwaitesii, Miq. in Ann. Mus. Lugd. Bat iii. 229, 294.— F. disticha, 



Thw. (nonBlume) Enum. PL Ceylon, 266.— F. diver siformis, Miq. in 

 Lond. Journ. Bot. vii. 441; Ann. Mus. Lugd. Bat. iii. 281, 294; 

 Thwaites' Enum. PL Ceylon, 266.— .F. slipulata, Moon (not of Thunbg.) 



Cat. Ceylon Plants, p. 74. 



A shrub, with slender, creeping, root-emitting stem, and stout, spreading, sub-glabrous, 



branches on which the receptacles are borne ; the stem, when young, thinly 



rooting 



, sub 



all 



clothed with brown, rather soft, pubescence ; its leaves shortly petiolate 

 polymorphous, from elliptic or ovate to 3-lobed and almost hastate; the apex in all 

 forms obtuse, and the base emarginate or cordate, boldly 3-nerved, and often with 

 2 subsidiary nerves; the under surfaces pale, with distinct, open, tesselato reticulations, 

 pubescent on the midrib and nerves; upper surfaces adpressed-pubescent, sub-scabnd; 

 length of blade -5 in. to -75 in. (according to Miquel to 15 in.) long; petioles about -1 in. ; 

 stipules 2 to each leaf, ovate-acuminate, scarious, sparsely pubescent, a little longer than 

 the petiole. Leaves of the receptacle-bearing branches twice as large as those of the stem 

 and its barren branches ; elliptic or obovate, never lobed or hastate. Receptacles axillary, 

 usually solitary, smooth, globular, about -35 in. in diam., contracted at the base into a thin 

 stalk about -1 in. long, at the junction of which with the peduncle proper are 3 broadly 

 ovate basal bracts; length of peduncle proper about -5 in. Male, gall, and fertile female 

 flowers mixed over all parts of the same receptacle ; the perianths of all of 2 or 3 short, 



broad, obovate, loosely-attached pieces. Male flowers with 2 anthers which much exceed the 



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