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entire fascicles enveloped by their special bracts, and cutting out a few 

 bracts of the upper, mean and lower parts of the spike, and drying all (the 

 flowers under moderate, the rest under rather heavy pression) in an appro- 

 piate stove or on a coal fire or in full sunshine. The flower may be dried 

 entire or sliced up between one of the staminodes and the labellum and 

 laid open (the latter manoeuvre is to be preferred). Flowers dried in such 

 a way, being soaked in diluted ammonia, are almost as good for study as 

 fresh ones. 



So far as to the collecting. There is however an other way by which 

 some collectors in gathering plants of this order are largely sinning and 

 this is by adding incomplete notes about colour of flowers, bracts and 

 leaves, (in Curcuma and Zingiber also of the rhizome) habit, heighth, 

 length of scapes of lateral inflorescences. Rather frequently 1 met in her- 

 baria with inflorescences cut off at their base or with only the upper part 

 of the peduncle, without mentioning of the whole length of it, or of its absence. 

 Curcuma-species are often indeterminable because the spike was severed 

 from the plant, without the least indication about its growing apart or at 

 the top of the leaf stem. I also received sometimes specimens without 

 flowers because the collector in gathering them remembered having taken 

 the same flowers already at a former occurrence, which remembrance 

 afterwards by inspecting the leaves proved an illusion. I cannot enough 

 recommend the beginning collectors never in such a case to trust to me- 

 mory, however trustworthy it may be, and always to provide specimen, 

 notes, and separate parts with one same number. 



§ 3. Just before the finishing of this publication, the first flower 

 appeared of a plant sprung from a rhizome of the Ceylon „/«/'/nmc" which 

 I thank to the kindness of Mr. PtTCH, curator of the Botanical Garden of 

 Peradenyia, and which was grown in the Heyne culture garden in March 

 of the year under No. 727. 



The plant is rather poor but it resembles in all aspects the Javanese 

 „kunyit". So did the rhizome, and so does the flowering spike. The coma 

 is purely white, no purple tinge at the top, the mean bracts pale green 

 the flowers identical to those of the malayan „kunyit" and of the Singapore 

 Jurmeric" with the same broad and strong spurs with outward bent tips. 



Hereby my suggestion that A.momum Curcuma Jacq. often considered 

 as the type of the „turmeric" is a different species, has become almost 

 a certainty, and I suppose that the pink coma bracts mentioned by all 

 authors except Rumph, Koening and Roxburgh, base on a tradition, no 

 author since Roxburgh having seen the living spikes till now. 



