42 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. IX. 



THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 

 By Surgeon-Major K. R. Kirtikar, i.m.s., f.l.s., 

 Acting Professor of Botany, Grant Medical College. 

 PART IX. 

 {With Plate K.) 

 (Continued from Vol. VIII, page 461.) 

 AMORPHOPHALLUS CAMPAN ULATU $—(Blume) . 

 (Natural Order — Aroidb^.) 

 Marathi — gr°r. 

 An annual, tuberous, herbaceous, seedless plant, flowering before 

 leafing. It has no nectaries. 



Synonym — Arum Campanulatum (Roxb.) 



Tuber. — Larger in size than the adult human head ; sometimes 

 three times as large in the cultivated variety ; smaller than the adult 

 human head usually in the wild variety ; spheroid, with concentric 

 tuberculate rings on the upper surface, where on the central part there 

 is a shallow concavity or depression, often a slight circular prominence 

 round the scape, corresponding to the attachment of the petiole of the 

 previous year. After the leaf has completed the maturation of the 

 new tuber, it separates, petiole and all, from this depression or promi- 

 nence which is from 1| to 2 inches in diameter and has at its central part, 

 a mammilla marking the spot whence the flower-stalk of the future 

 year shoots forth in the succeeding hot weather. 



The substance of the tuber is hard, solid, fleshy ; externally pale 

 blackish ; internally white, pale pink, or deep brown ; on section 

 discharging drops of acrid, clear, shining, gummy mucus, which turns 

 brown on standing ; the tuber is studded with numerous rootlets. The 

 general appearance of the tuber presents a marked convexity on the 

 lower surface, and a slight concavity on the upper surface ; sometimes 

 the upper surface is almost flat. 



N.B. — Properly speaking, the underground stem we have named 

 as Tuber here on the authority of Hooker is a Corm. 



Rootlets. — Long, filiform, whitish, denser near the scape, beyond 

 which they are thicker, often of the size of a goose-quill, arising here 

 and there in large numbers from small bubils or tubercles from all 

 parts of the main tuber. Such is the habit of the tuber that if by any 

 process of arrest of development, such as rotting, the entire formation 



