CYRTANDREAE HAWAIIENSES 
269 
meadow land and planted Eucalypti. Many plants which were 
peculiar to that region, as for example Cyanea comata, Cyanea arborea 
and others, have vanished forever and among them is also Cyrtandra 
begoniaefolia. This species could only have thrived in dense shady 
forests,^ which today are no more and their place is taken by a cattle 
ranch, covered with obnoxious weeds. The writer is acquainted with 
C. begoniaefolia only from the single sheet in the Hillebrand collection. 
It diflfers mainly from C. Pickeringii to which it is related, in the 
oblique, not cordate leaves. 
Cyrtandra platyphylla A. Gray, Proc. Amer. Acad. 5: 350. 1862 
Plant about 3.5 m. high; leaves subrotund to cordate at the base, 
shortly acuminate, denticulate, 12-20 cm. long, sHghtly less wide, 
shortly and densely yellowish-pilose above, pubescent to subvillose 
beneath, the petioles 3-6 cm. long; peduncles 3 cm. long, many flowered, 
the bracts never clasping; pedicels i cm. long; calyx at flowering about 
I cm. long, irregularly 5-fid, the lobes oblong-lanceolate or broadly 
lanceolate, shorter than the corolla; ovary and style glabrous; fruit 
narrow-oblong, sessile. 
Hawaii: In forests, U. S. Exploring Exped.; Hilo forests, Hille- 
brand, one sheet ex coll. Hillebrand in herb. BerHn; forests near the 
Volcano of Kilauea, elev. 3,800 feet, Kalanilehua, flowering Aug., 
1917, Rock no. 12990 (typica); Naalehu forest, Kau, elev. 3,500 feet, 
flowering Jan., 1912, Rock no. 10030 in herb. College of Hawaii; 
Kohala Mts., Alakahi — Kawainui ditch trail, flowering July 13, 1909, 
Rock no. 4474 in herb. College of Hawaii. 
Cyrtandra platyphylla with its varieties and forms is certainly the 
predominating species on the island of Hawaii. In fact it is the most 
variable species of Cyrtandreae in the Hawaiian Islands. This tends 
to show that it is still in the process of evolution, as is the case with 
certain species of Lobelioideae on the same island. It may be stated 
that Hawaii has fewer species of Cyrtandra than any other island of 
this archipelago. There are a few arborescent forms and one or two 
herbaceous ones as C. paludosa, but nothing like the number of species, 
really distinct species, that occur on Oahu or Molokai. 
Kauai possesses about the most settled species, but they are few in 
number compared to those occurring on Oahu and Molokai. What is 
lacking in species on Hawaii is there made up in varieties and forms of 
this variable species ''Cyrtandra platyphylla/' which is almost the 
2 Rock, Indigenous Trees Haw. Isl. page 21, also plate 145. 
