160 Mr Yapp, Notes on new and interesting Plants 



Gephaelis stipulacea, Blume, of which I found two or three 

 specimens in thick jungle, at an altitude of about 3 to 4 thousand 

 feet, has hitherto been recorded only from Java. 



Among the Asclepiadaceae there is an epiphyte, which is 

 probably a new species of Pentanura, though the flowers are much 

 larger than is usual in that genus. 



This specimen was procured by the expedient of shooting 

 several charges of heavy shot into a mass of foliage, many feet 

 above the ground, where the red glint of flowers could be dimly 

 discerned. 



The Gesneriaceae are represented by a number of new species, 

 belonging to the genera JEschynanthus, Didymocarpus, etc. 



Many of the species in this Order, especially in the section 

 Gyrtandraceae, to which all the Old World species belong, have an 

 extraordinarily limited distribution 1 , most (if not all) of the high 

 mountain ranges of this region which have been yet explored 

 botanically, having furnished their quota of new forms 2 . 



In the Order Acanthaceae there is a new species of Asy stasia, 

 and also a plant which will probably have to be put into a new 

 genus, as it does not seem to fall at all naturally into any of those 

 already recognised. 



Monocotyledons. 



The Orchidaceae furnish a new species of Dendrobium. This 

 is a rather pretty epiphyte, with bright rose-purple flowers, which 

 was found at a height of 5200 feet. It is closely allied to Dendro- 

 bium cornutum, Hook, f., which is also a species from the Malay 

 Peninsula. 



In the Gramineae is a curious bamboo, Bambusa Wrayi, Stapf. 

 This bamboo, which grows in large clumps at a height of 4000 feet 

 to nearly 6000 feet above sea level, is of interest partly on account 

 of its rarity, being known only from two localities, both in Perak, 

 i.e. Gunong Inas, and the mountains at the source of the Plus 

 river 3 : but especially from the fact that it is the plant from which 

 the Sakeis and Semangs, two wild non-malayan races of aborigines 

 inhabiting the Malay Peninsula, make their ' sumpitans ' or blow- 

 guns. The stems of this extremely graceful bamboo are from 40 

 to 60 feet high, and are remarkable for the extraordinary length 

 of their internodes, which are often from 7 to 8 feet long, though 

 they seldom reach a diameter of more than one inch. 



These long thin internodes the wild tribes use for their blow- 



1 C. B. Clarke in De Candolle's Monographiae phanerogamarum — Gyrtandraceae, 

 p. 5. 



2 H. N. Ridley, Jour. Linn. Soc, vol. xxxn. p. 497. 



3 Letter from L. Wray, jr. in the Kew Bulletin, 1893, p. 17. 



