1896.] G. King — Notes on the Indian Species of Vitis, 111 



least) Wallich's No. -5995 C. "and D. The species is admitted by Sir 

 Dietrich Brandis in his excellent Forest Flora of North- Western India. 

 It is distinguished by the mixture of soft pale hairs and dark subulate 

 bristles with which the young stems petioles and tendrils are covered. 

 The species is really a vevy distinct one ; but it has been misunderstood 

 owing, I believe, mainly to a mistake of its author Wallich who mixed 

 under the name V. barbata specimens which bore the same number 

 (5994) as his species V. rugosa, and which really belong to V. rugosa. 

 As a rule the pubescence of V. barbata, is pale brown and not rufescent. 

 But in specimens from Perak the pubescence is pale ferrugineous and 

 the leaves are moreover slightly three-lobed. In other respects the 

 Perak plant agrees with specimens from Burma, the Andamans and 

 Sylhet. V. rugosa, Wall, to which this species is undoubtedly allied, 

 appears, however, to be quite separable. It has not the characteristic 

 bristles of V. barbata, and its pubescence is always rufescent. V. 

 rugosa has really little affinity with V. lanata, Ptoxb. to which it has 

 been reduced by Mr. Lawson and others. 



27. Vitis lanata Roxb. Very few species have been so mis- 

 understood as this. The plant described by Roxburgh, and of which 

 he left a beautiful coloured figure in the Calcutta Herbarium, was 

 found by him in the Circars, and it has since been collected in the 

 N.-W. Himalaya, Sikkim, Khasia, Assam and Upper Burma. It 

 has broadly-cordate acuminate exserted-serrate leaves both surfaces 

 of wdiich, when young, have a scanty coating of white woolly hair. 

 It is at once distinguished by its bifurcate inflorescence, which consists 

 really of two divaricating thyrses springing from the apex of a com- 

 mon peduncle. A glabrous variety of this is very common, and by that 

 variety the species so closely approaches V. parvifolia, Roxb., that 

 I do not think the latter can be maintained as a species. The only 

 differences that I can find between the two are that in the latter the 

 leaves are sometimes 3-lobed, and the inflorescence is always much 

 smaller and shorter ; it is, however, bifurcate. The chief cause of the 

 misunderstanding of this species was no doubt the issue by Wallich, 

 under the name V. lanata, Roxb., of his No. 5995 B, — a species with 

 a coating of felted rufous tomentum on the young stems and tendrils 

 and on the under surfaces of the leaves. This (the Vitis lanata of 

 Wallich) is the plant figured under Roxburgh's name by Decaisne in 

 Jacquemont's Voyage dans I'lnde, Atlas, II. PI. 36. The oldest name for 

 the plant appears to me to be Vitis corclifoUa, Roth (Nov. Spec. PI. 

 158) a name which, owing to its pre^ occupation by au American species 

 of Michaux's, Roemer and Schultes (Vol. V, 3 IS) changed to Vitis 

 Jleyneana, This species has tendril-bonring thyrses which do not bifur- 



