BALFOUR—NEW SPECIES OF RHODODENDRON. 289 
from them, but it may represent the plant of G. Don’s description 
in 1834. As regards the foliage-bud scale-leaves, they are present 
on every N.W. Himalayan dried specimen which I have seen of 
the alliance, and they are absent from every East Himalayan dried 
specimen. They are not visible on the Gossain Than specimens 
in the Wallichian Herbarium now at Kew, as Dr. Stapf kindly 
informs me, and from the same source I learn that they are present 
on the Badrinath, Srinagar specimens in the same herbarium. 
I find them on all the yellow-flowered plants of the alliance 
which are in cultivation at Edinburgh, and they are absent 
from all our pink-flowered and white-flowered plants. 
In 1841 Graham gave an account of Rh. anthopogon, D. Don * 
based upon living plants flowering at Dysart House, Fifeshire. 
He says that the plants were obtained from Messrs. Loddiges 
five years previously and had flowered in three successive years. 
Graham’s description was transferred to the Botanical Magazine 
in the following year (1842) as text to the illustration t. 3947. 
The figure shows a plant with “ yellowish-white ”’ flowers, and, 
according to Graham, it differed from Dr. Royle’s figure in 
being of much paler colour, in the segments of the corolla being 
much broader, overlapping, and undulate, and in the bracts 
being rusty rather than yellow. The Botanical Magazine figure 
does not show persistent foliage-bud scale-leaves, and another 
noticeable point is that the flower truss has comparatively few 
flowers, many fewer than in the usual bright yellow N.W. 
Himalayan plant. In the Edinburgh Herbarium are two twigs 
of the Dysart House plant, unfortunately broken and fragment- 
ary, furnishing no satisfactory evidence for determining their 
origin from N.W. or E. Himalaya. One would not expect so 
skilful an artist as Mr. W. Fitch to omit representation of the 
persistent foliage-bud scale-leaves had they been present on the 
specimen from which he made his illustration, and if one 
makes the point critical, then the plant figured was from the 
East Himalaya. The “ yellowish white’”’ flower is of less 
moment, because in cultivation the colour is sometimes quite 
pale from the outset in the N.W. Himalayan plant. Graham’s 
text does not help to a decision, for, elaborate though it be, 
it is not specific within this now very large genus. The data 
do not suffice for a decision upon the question of what 
plant the Botanical Magazine figure represents. If Sik 
plants were coming into Britain at so early a date the plant 
might well be one of them. I have not seen in cultivation a 
plant of which the figure is a correct representation, 
The next important landmark in this history is the advent 
of the Sikkim Rhododendron in the late ’forties. Of Rh. 
* Graham in Edin. New Phil. Journ, xxxi (1841), 394. 
