1897.] D. Prain — More addition al species of Labiatae. 519 



9. Pogostemon Patchodli Pelletier. 



Granting that Pelletier's plant is specifically the same as P. Heyneanus Benth., 

 which is what is contended in the F. B. I. iv. 633, then Bentham's name, dating as 

 it does from 1830, cannot very well be supplanted by that of Pelletier which only 

 dates from 1845. It may well be that the Patchouli plant, P. Patchouli Pelletier, is 

 no more than a cultivated state of P. Heyneanus ; the latter, however, is a com- 

 mon wild species without the Patchouli smell and with somewhat different leaves. 

 The Patchouli is by no means a " common " garden plant in India ; where its culti- 

 vation is attended to, it is said to be carefully grown along with Piper Betle. This 

 cultivation is apparently confined to the Indian Peninsula ; the plant flowers freely 

 and profusely. 



Var. suavis Hook. fil. This, which is Pogostemon Patchouli of Sir W. Hooker as 

 opposed to that of M. Pelletier, is also the Pogostemon suavis of Tenore ; it has, as 

 Sir Joseph Hooker points out, a close affinity with P. parvijlorus, — a wild plant 

 that does not have the Patchouli smell. It bears in fact to P. parvijlorus exactly the 

 relationship that P. Patchouli bears to P. Heyneanus, and unless P. Heyneanus and 

 P. parvijlorus be themselves no more than forms of one species, a view in favour of 

 which something might be said, it seems for the present better to keep P. suavis 

 specifically apart from P. Patchouli. The writer, however, cannot find any character 

 to separate P. suavis Ten. (P. Patchouli Hook, not of Pelletier) from P. Cablin Benth., 

 of the Philippines. 



The Flora of British India is careful to exclude from Sir William Hooker's 

 P. Patchouli the citation Pucha-pat of Wallich in Kew Journ. i. 22 ; the place which 

 Pucha-pat is to occupy is not noted. The point is of importance, because Wallich's 

 Pucha-pat, which is quite distinct from the Indian P. Patchouli Pelletier, is the plant 

 that mainly yields the Patchouli and the Patchouli products of commerce ; to this 

 end it is assiduously cultivated on a considerable scale by Chinese colonists through- 

 out the Malay countries. It is not clear that it is grown in China itself or indeed 

 that the plant is known there ; on the contrary there is much to favour the belief 

 that it is in China replaced by one or more plants yielding the same odour. Unlike 

 P. Patchouli, the Pucha-pat of Wallich is very shy of flowering, if indeed it ever does 

 flower. Plants for example that were introduced to the Royal Botanic Gardens 

 at Calcutta in 1834 and that have been freely propagated by other means than by 

 seed from that period onwards have never once flowered, though a succession of the 

 ablest gardeners in India have during the past 60 years made the flowering of the 

 Malayan Patchouli one of the objects of their lives. 



Familiar aquaintance with the living Pucha-pat and a careful examination of 

 the specimen of Sir William Hooker's plant in Herb. Kew, has convinced the writer 

 that Sir William Hooker was absolutely right and that Wallich's Pucha-pat is only, 

 at best, a cultivated race of Sir William's P. Patchouli which is, however, merely 

 Tenore's P. suavis and is certainly not Pelletier's P. Patchouli. 



The Patchouli smell is not confined to these two plants or even to the genus 

 Pogostemon. Among Indian genera it is shared by Mesona, and in China it is associ- 

 ated with at least two species of the genus Microtoena, one of which, M. robusta, is 

 employed on this account much as the Indian, or true, Patchoxdi is. That the 

 other, M. cymosa, is so used has not been made clear ; this latter plant occurs in 

 Indo-China and in most cases is only doubtfully wild. It is not always Patchouli- 

 scented, but when it is so scented it is apt, though it flowers freely, to produce 

 only abortive fruits. 



