108 Gr. King — Notes on the Indian Species of Vitis. [No. 2, 



Notes on the Indian Species of Vitis, Linn.— By George King, M.B., LL.D., 

 F.R.S., CLE. Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta. 

 [Reed. 28th April, Bead 6th May]. 

 In working out the species of Vitis of the Malay Peninsula for mv 

 " Materials " for a Flora of that region, I had occasion to examine, as 

 critically as I could, the species indigenous to British India ; and on 

 some of these T made notes for my own use. With the idea that per- 

 haps these notes, made in a large Herbarium, may possibly be of some 

 nse to Indian Botanists less fortunately situated as regards access to 

 good suites of specimens, I offer them to the Society this evening. The 

 numbers — where numbers are given — are those of the species des- 

 cribed in Sir Joseph Hooker's Flora of British India, by the late 

 Mr. M. A. Lawson, whose recent death at Ootacamund, his many friends 

 deplore. 



3. V. sagittipolia, Laws. This is exactly V. hastata, Miq. (Ann. 

 Mus. Lugd. Bat. I, 85) and V. diffusa, Laws. 1. c. 646 ; and is probably the 

 same plant that was named V. cerifera by T. and B. It is part of what was 

 issued by Wallich as his V. glaberrima (Wall. Cat. 5991) : and it is that 

 part of it which Wallich described in Carey's edition of Roxburgh's 

 Flora Indica, and consequently that part of 5991 to which the name 

 V. glaberrima must be attached. The exact state of the synonymy is 

 given in the following note from my Materials for a Flora of the 

 Malay Peninsula, No. 8. 



" Under the name V. glaberrima and the number 5991, Wallich 

 distributed two species of Vitis gathered partly in Penang and partly 

 in Singapore. These two gatherings are not, as is usual with Wallich's 

 plants in similar cases, distinguished by letters. On two of the 

 four sheets of No. 5991 which are now present in the Calcutta Her- 

 barium, " Penang " is given as the locality ; and these agree with the 

 description of the species V. glaberrima (ex Penang) published by 

 Wallich in Carey's abortive edition of Roxburgh's Flora Indica (Vol. II, 

 476.) This Penang plant agrees absolutely with type specimens of 

 Vitis hastata, Miquel, and of V. sagittifolia, LaAVSon. On the third sheet 

 of No. 5991, in the Calcutta Herbarium, no locality is noted : on this 

 sheet is glued down a specimen of a different species which I have 

 identified as a variety of the one named V. cerasiformis by Teysmann 

 and Binnindyk many years after the issue of Wallich's plants. The 

 fourth sheet of No. 5991 at Calcutta is occupied by stems of the latter 

 and a collection of leaves of both the former and latter. The V. glaber- 

 rima of Wallich is thus a mixed species ; and, as such, would have had 

 to be dropped, had not Wallich published a description of his Penang 



