AN EPITOME OF THE BRITISH INDIAN SPECIES OF 
IMPATIENS. 
»• 
By y. D\ Hooker, 
— * 4 — 
INTRODUCTION. 
The following classified list of Indian Balsams, followed by some 
synonymy and habitats, is offered to the Records of the Botanical 
Survey of India in the hope that it may induce the resident 
botanists and forest officers of that country to take up the collecting, 
if not the study, of this, which is the second largest genus ♦ of 
Indian flowering plants and that which has hitherto been the most 
neglected by collectors. 
The classification of species here attempted is a wide departure 
from that adopted in the Flora of British India. For this there are 
two principal rea* ons^— firstly, the number of new species discovered 
since the publication (in 1874) of that work f and the communication 
of better materials of others has demanded a re-examination of the 
old sections, resulting in the revision of some, the abandonment of 
others, and the construction of additional ones. Secondly, the res- 
triction of the vast majority of the species of Impatiens each to its 
• In number of Ii^dian species (about 200) Imi>ati€ns\^ eJKeeded by dendto- 
alone. It abounds most in countries a very few places in which have been 
explored ; as the Eastern Himalaya, for about 300 miles of which the small district 
of Sikkim a’one has been explored, yielding Howard of 60 species; Nepal, 
500 miles long, from which about 15 species, from the Khatmindu Valley, were 
brought by VVallich in 1822 ; and Burma, which is said to swarm with species 
in its hilly districts, but has as yet yielded only 52, which is however double the 
number from that country recorded in the Flora of British India. 
f The number of species described in the Flora of British India (1874) is only 
124, whereas now, in 1891., about 200 are known, together with a large contingent 
of indeterminables. During the same interval the Western Himalayan species 
have risen from to 24; the Eastern Himalayan from 25 to 63; and the 
Burmese from 22 to 52 (all above numbers approximate only). 
Rec. Bot. Surv. Ind. iv. I. 
