1896.] Or. King — Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula. 413 



Penang : W:illich, Stoliczka, Curtis, King. Joliore ; King. Perak ; 

 Kiugs Collector, Nos. 505, 2194. 



The specific name given to this is unfortunate, as it implies that 

 the plant is a large one. As a matter of fact it is a much smaller 

 plant thani. angulata, Korth. which often forms a tree 30 feet in height; 

 while this is usually a shrub about 10 feet high. This species has 

 however very much larger leaves and panicles than any other Leea 

 known to me. The flowers of this are bluish red : the teeth of the 

 staminal tube I find, contrary to the observations of the late Mr. 

 Kurz and Mr. C. B. Clarke, to be bifid at the apex. My colleague 

 Dr. Prain, to whom I have shown dissections of flowers taken from Wall. 

 Cat. 6323B, (as well as from other specimens) quite agrees with me 

 in this. As Mr. Clarke has remarked in his excellent Revision of the 

 Indian Species of Leea (Trimen's Journ. Bot. for 1881, p. 100 et seq.), 

 the characters of the seeds of this plant have given rise to some dis- 

 cussion. I find them to be as above described. The late Mr. Kurz (in 

 Journ. As. Soc. Beng., Vol. 42, p. 65) described them thus : " semina 

 obtuse carinata, lateribus tuberculato-costatis," which is a fairly accurate 

 account of them. In a later number of the same Journal, ( Vol. 44, 

 p. 178) however, he described them in these woi'ds " seeds tubercled- 

 keeled, the edges tubercled-ribbed," which is inaccurate. Mr. Clarke, 

 disregarding Kurz's earlier description, and not finding the seeds of 

 this species to agree with his later description, assumed that Kurz must 

 have had another plant before him, and for this plant Mr. Clarke has 

 proposed the name (Trimen's Journ. I. c.)L. tuberculo-semen. The very 

 specimens described by Kurz as L. gigantea, Griff, are however, in the 

 Calcutta Herbarium, and they bear that name in his own handwriting. 

 These specimens undoubtedly agree with all the sheets of Wall. Cat. 

 6823B. in the same Herbarium, which Mr. Clarke regards as true L. gigan- 

 tea. The truth probably is that the markings on the sides of the seeds 

 which Kurz described in two ways in the Journal of the Asiatic 

 Society are post mortem appearances — an explanation which is supported 

 by the facts that, in his Flora of Burma, Kurz describes them in still 

 another way as " bluntish-keeled and tubercled-ribbed; " and that nobody's 

 description agrees with Griffith's figure (Ic. PI. Asiat. t. 645, fig. 3) 

 which was probably drawn from fresh seeds ! Dry seeds taken from 

 Herbarium specimens moreover vary in appearance according as they 

 are examined immediately after having been boiled, or after some delay : 

 and this is no doubt the explanation of Kurz's three differing descrip- 

 tions. The nearest ally of this species is undoubtedly L. sambncina. 

 Willd; but that species has much smaller leaves, leaflets and panicles, 

 and it has green not red flowers. 

 J. ii. 53 



