320 
throughout Travancore and the adjoining district of Tinnivelli. 
Rottler knew it and put it down, though with some doubt, as 
Andropogon Nardus, which it resembles very much indeed. 
Ainslie* (1813) mentions it as ‘Sukkanaroo-pilloo’ and ‘ Ginger- 
grass’ (the exact equivalent of the Tamil name), and says of it: 
‘“‘This is a variety of the grass which is well known in lower India 
by the name of the lemon-grass ; it differs, however, from it in 
this respect, that on being chewed, it has a strong flavor of ginger. 
It is very common on the Courtallam Hills in the Tinnivelli 
District, where the natives consider an infusion of it as stomachic 
and febrifuge,” and later on (1826)t he adds: “the natives 
occasionally prepare with it an essentia! oil.” This, I believe, is 
the first record of oil being prepared from Malabar grass. Klein 
collected the grass in 1818 on the same hills, and his specimens, 
which are also marked ‘ Suckunari pillu, Tam.; Ginger-grass, 
Ang.; Andropogon Nardus (?),’ leave no doubt as to its identity 
with the plant from which the Travancore or Cochin lemon-grass 
oil is produced. Wight subsequently distributed specimens of the 
same grass as ‘Andropogon flexuosus, N.E.’ It was not, however, 
_ described until 1855, when Steudelt published a description - 
retaining for it Nees’ name; but not much notice was taken of 
Steudel’s species which, if mentioned at all, was usually cited as a 
synonym of .4ndropogon Nardus, as for instance by Bentley and 
Trimen,§ who moreover figured it as Andropogon Nardus. In 
1889, Hackell] distinguished it as a variety of the typical Andro- 
_pogon Nardus (Citronella grass), and the same place was given to 
it by Hooker in the Flora of British India,{ but neither author 
connected it with the Lemon-grass oil of Travancore, which very 
generally was treated simply as “ Lemon-grass oil.” 
Morphologically, C. flecuosus differs from the other species of 
the Nardus series by its large, loose, greyish or slate-coloured 
panicles, the branches of which are particularly slender, long, 
flexuous and often drooping, and by the less conspicuous spathes 
and the smaller, usually very slender and acute spikelets. The 
basal leaf-sheaths are rather narrower than those of C. Nardus 
and CU. confertiflorus and are not reddish within. 
MALABAR GRASS OIL.—When the Malabar Grass-oil—this name, 
which is used in Barber’s collection, is preferable to the name 
Travancore Lemon-grass oil—was first exported, I do not know 
precisely ; but the “ lemon-grass oil’? mentioned by Pereira (1850) 
as imported into Kngland from Cochin was very likely the oil of 
C. flecuosus, and not of C. citratus. In 1859, Major Heber Drury, 
writing to D. Hanbury and referring to a specimen of C. 
Jflexuosus,** which he had sent him, says: “From this species 
(and from this only) Lemon-grass oil is distilled in Travancore.” 
* Ainslie, Mat. Med. (1813), pp. 115 and 116. 
+ Ainslie, Mat. Med., vol. ii. (1826), p. 50. 
t Steudel, Syn. Pl. Glum., vol. i. (1855), p. 388. 
§ Bentley and Trimen, Medic. Pl. (1880), tab. 297. 
|| Hackel, Androp. in DC. Monogr. Phaner., vol. vi. (1889), p. 603. 
4 Hook. f., Fl. Brit. Ind., vol. vii. (1897), p. 207. 
** Drury did not, however, use that name. In 1858, in his Useful Plants of 
India, he includes the Travancore grass in Andropogon citratus, and six years 
later, in his Handbook of the Indian Flora, vol. iii., p. 640, in Andropogon 
Schoenanthus, . ~ 
