4 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
THE GENUS CERATOSTIGMA. 
By Lievur.-Cotoneu D. Pra, F.R.S. 
Tue Plumbaginaceous genus Ceratostigma was founded by Bunge 
in 1834 on a plant colle ted by himself a few Lt before in the 
neighbourhood of Pekin. The original species (C. plumbagi- 
noides Bunge) was sn beaiiniiualy found to occur in and about 
Shanghai and other Hastern Chinese cities; it ste sufficient 
notice to ensure its transmission to Europe, and its establishment 
in western horticulture. par shortly after ite Rcioqustion to 
England, described and figured it under the name Plumbago Lar- 
penta ;+ this name is still posites associated with it in Kuropean 
gardens. 
ast a quarter of a century before Bunge discovered Cerato- 
stigma plunbaginite in North-east China, Salt had found in the 
Abyssinian highlands another Plumbaginaceous plant, which R. 
Sieieet: mend ered to be new, and, without describing it, named 
et seiitdicinea.t -{ This plant was again collected by Schimper, 
ose collections it and another closely allied form were treated 
by Hochstetter as the basis of a distinet genus Valoradia, first 
esr oe 1842. 
w years later Boissier, when Monographing the Plumbagi- 
nae spt ed that, in spite of their remote geographical areas 
erely con ditions of one species.’ We do, however, now kno w that 
area nearly allied to Salt’s Abyssinian one, but with a different 
habit of growth, occurs in Somaliland. 
The record, since Boissier wrote, of several additloni’ Asiatic 
species of Cera eratostigma has lessened the singularity of distribution 
commented on by him and other authors. Besides the herbaceous 
Chinese s) i i 
China into Eastern Tibet, while another ne arly allied shrubby 
species occurs in ce Kastern Himalaya. <A fifth Asiatic species, 
also a shrub, is endemic in Tibet. 
The break in the area occupied by Ceratostigma is thus less 
extensive than was believed to hei the case, and although the western 
EiieconkoctleaMan nc 
, Bunge, Enum. Pl. Chin. B. 55 (1834). 
t srg — oT p. 732, with fig. (1847). 
+ Brown Voy., ein ta p. pies asia 
§ Hochsttir in Flora, xx 
|| Boissier in DC. Prod. xii, "694 (184 
q Oliver i in Flor. Trop. Afr, iii, 487 (877). 
