388 D. Pram — Some additional Leguminosae. [No. 2, 



ed from Ceylon and ihe Sundribnns to the west of the Sea of Bengal. It is, however, 

 extremely plentiful, to the east of that sea, on the shores of Southern Burma, of the 

 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and of the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago. All 

 inland localities cited in botanical works for this species are erroneous. 



Var. hirsutum DC. Prodr. ii. 325, not mentioned in the F. B. I. account of the 

 species, looks very distinct on account of its more villous branches and petioles and 

 its persistently pubescent pods, but is not perhaps a very valid variety. Strangely 

 it is only known from plants grown in the Calcutta garden and in the garden at 

 Buitenzorg, where (as the Collector's ticket notes) it was an introduction from 

 Calcutta; Wall. Cat. n. 5687 D, Hort. Bogor. n. 2037 are good examples of the form. 

 This 'variety' has been by Dr. Wallich and others confounded with the very 

 different Wall. Cat. n. 5687 B., which at first apparently Dr. Wallich did consider 

 separable, and which is a very distinct species. * 



16. Desmodium Wallichii Train; branches slightly angled, leaflets 

 obtuse mucronulate, mesial rhomboid almost as long as broad, joints of 

 pod large as long as broad, persistently hirsute. D. umbellatum Wall. 

 Cat. 5687 B ; Coll. 8f Hemsl., Journ. Linn. Soc. xxviii. 42, not of DC. 



Upper Burma ; Segain, Lime Hills, Wallich ! Meiktila, Collett ! 



A shrub with densely fulvous young branches. Petioles £— 1 in., leaflets sub- 

 coriaceous, glabrous above, rather densely fulvous-tomentose beneath, the veins and 

 veinlets very distinctly raised, end-leaflet 2\ in. in diam. Flowers subumbellate, the 

 peduucle prolonged beyond the basal whorl. Calyx £ in., silky, teeth longer than 

 tube. Corolla % in. Pod 1-1J in., joints 3-4, strigose. 



Dr. Wallich at first gave to this the MSS, name Desmodium rhomboideum. The 

 name unfortunately cannot be used as there is a nomen nudum, D. rhomboideum 

 Sweet, Hort. Brit. ed. ii. 151, which cannot refer to this plant. Sweet's name is one 

 of those purely catalogue publications that give so much trouble to botanists. It 

 was employed by its author to indicate Hedysarum rhombifolium Koxb. (not of 

 Elliott) a plant that was raised in the Calcutta garden from seed sent to Dr. Rox- 

 burgh from Upper India in 1811 by Genl. Hardwicke. Roxburgh allowed it to drop 

 out of his lists for the subsequent Flora Indica, (he issued the name in the 

 Hortus Bengalensis) and he makes no reference to it in the manuscript copy of his 

 description of Indian plants preserved at Calcutta. Dr. Wallich's annotated copy of 

 the Hortus Bengalensis shows that he did not know the plant, and Voigt's reference 

 to it in the Hortus Suburbanus where (not knowing that Sweet had already taken 

 the trouble to change its name) he calls it D. Harwickianum, is copied from Rox- 

 burgh's original reference. All the evidence now available points to its being the 

 plant at present known as D. podocarpum. 



lc. Desmodium rugosum Prain, Journ. As. Soc. Beng. Ixvi. 2. 137 ; 

 branches terete, leaflets acute, mesial nearly twice as long as broad, 

 joints of pod large, If times as long as broad, persistently hirsute. 



Tenasserim ; Lathorga, 2000 feet, common, Gallatly ! Kedah ; 

 Langkawi, Curtis n. 2550 ! 



A gregarious straggling shrub with glabrescent lenticelled branches. Petioles 

 1-1$ i n -» leaflets coriaceous, glabrous above, hirsute only on the very prominent veins 

 and veinlets beneath, end-leaflet 6-7 in. long by 3 in. across, ovate-acute tapering 

 in both directions from the middle, the base narrowly truncate. Flowers umbellate, 



