330 
been observed anywhere in a wild state. Statements to that effect 
have occasionally been made; but they have arisen from the 
confusion of the cultivated Sereh with other similar and truly wild 
species of Cymbopogon. Dr. De Vry in a letter to D. Hanbury says 
distinctly that it is not found in a spontaneous state in Java, 
and Dr. Koorders gives me the same assurance, so far as Java and 
Celebes are concerned ; and the fact that Rumphius never found 
the grass in flower on Siree Hill nor on the hill near Naco, where 
he thought it to be wild, makes me rather believe, that here too 
we have merely a case of escape and secondary establishment. 
East of the Malay Archipelago the Sereh has been found in 
native gardens or as an escape in their neighbourhood in Kaiser 
Wilhelmsland, in the Bismarck Archipelago,* and in Samoa and 
Fijit According to Balansa,t ‘ Andropogon MSchoenanthus, 
Roxb.’ (that is lemon-grass), also occurs in New Caledonia rather 
commonly on uncultivated and arid hill-sides, flowering very 
rarely. The colonists, he says, prepare from the highly aromatic 
leaves a much appreciated drink. I have not seen Balansa’s speci- 
men; Hackel, who has, considers it as very closely approaching 
his ‘ Andropogon ceriferum’ (also a synonym of lemon-grass) ; 
but the sample was too incomplete for accurate determination. If 
Balansa’s plant is actually lemon-grass, as is very probably the 
case, it is no doubt an alien in New Caledonia where it has locally 
established itself. When the cultivation of the grass spread to 
Polynesia it is so far impossible to say ; probably the introduction 
is of old date. The derivation of the Fiji name Ca-boi (Horne), 
or Co-boi (Seemann) = Co-grass which Seemann§ found in use 
in 1860, might throw some light on it. 
Turning from the Malay Archipelago to the mainland to the 
north and north-west of it, we find the lemon-grass in general 
cultivation from the Malay peninsula to Lower Burma on one side 
and to Canton on the other. In the Malay Peninsula, particu- 
larly near Singapore, it is grown on a larger scale for the dis- 
tillation of oil, but elsewhere mostly for culinary purposes. .The 
earliest record of it from this area is that by Loureiro, who 
observed it growing in gardens in Canton and Cochin China under 
the name of Mao-hiam (correct Mao-hsiang, 7.e., fragrant Mao). 
In Mergui it was collected by Griffith “in aquosis” in 1834. 
UNCERTAINTY OF THE TAXONOMIC POSITION.—Considering 
how widely it is distributed over the tropics of both Hemispheres, 
it is remarkable that the characters and the affinity of this grass 
have till now remained so obscure. It would indeed be quite 
unintelligible, but for the fact, already well known to Rumphius, 
that it flowers so extremely rarely, and on that account has 
been persistently neglected by collectors. It is true that a 
clue to it was given in the two specimens from Roxburgh’s 
herbarium and Lambert’s garden in the British Museum, but for 
some reason they remained entirely unnoticed, and such specimens 
as existed in other herbaria were, in the absence of sufficient 
* Schumann & Lauterb., Flora Deutsch-Schutzg. Siidsee, vol. i. (1901), p. 173. 
+ Seemann, FI. Vit. (1865), p. 320. Horne, A year in Fiji, p. 69. 
+ Balansa in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, vol, xix. (1872), p. 321. 
§ Seemann, l.c. 
|| Loureiro, Flor, Cochinch. (1790), p. 646. 
