AMBAREE, OR HEMP-LIKE HIBISCUS. 255 
colour, with a deep purple centre. Of the double calyx, the outer is seven- 
to eight-leaved, each subulate, spreading, and inserted near the base of the 
inner calyx. ‘This is five-cleft, divisions sharp-pointed, bristly, and 
glandular near the margins, and with a large gland on the middle of each 
division. ‘The stamens numerous, with their filaments united into a hollow 
column. Anthers one-celled, bursting by a transverse chink. Styles equal 
in number to the ovaries, and rising through the staminal columns. 
ae joined into a five-celled, five-valved capsule, with few seeds in each 
Dr. Roxburgh says of this plant, in his ‘Coromandel 
Plants,’ vol. ii, p. 48, tab. 190, where a beautiful plate is 
given : 7 
“Tt is much cultivated by the natives. Its leaves are in 
general used as an esculent vegetable, and taste something 
like sorrel. The bark is replete with strong and tolerably 
soft fibres, and is employed as a substitute for Hemp, to which 
it is much inferior both in strength and durability. 
“The usual time of cultivation is the cold season, though it 
will thrive pretty well at all times of the year, if it has suffi- 
cient moisture. A rich loose soil suits it best. The seeds are 
sown about as thick as Hemp, but generally mixed with some 
sort of small or dry grain, rendering it necessary to be sown 
very thin, that the other crop (which is one of those grains that 
does not grow nearly so high) may not be too much shaded. 
It requires about three months from the time it is sown, 
before it is fit to be pulled up for watering, which operation, 
with the subsequent dressing, is similar to that hereafter 
described for Crotalaria juncea.” 
Dr, Roxburgh states, that he found the fibres to be stronger 
when obtained from full-grown plants that had ripened their 
seed, than when cut from plants in blossom. On the 
Coromandel coast he found it cultivated, and a coarse sackcloth 
made of its fibres. 
In the Purneya district, Dr. Buchanan found it called 
Ambya Pata, on account of the acidity of its leaves, but in 
other parts chandana. In the southern parts the common 
cordage of the country was almost entirely made from its fibre. 
It was said to be sown in fields, which produce nothing else ; 
a practice which Dr. Buchanan had observed nowhere else in 
India. It appeared to him a coarse material in comparison 
with the fibre of the Corchorus, but he had no oppor- 
tunity of trying its strength. In some places a few of the 
