NOTE ON THE EAST HIMALAYAN SPECIES OF 
ALANGIUM. 
BY 
G. IL Cave and W. W, SMITH. 
I N the Flora of British India, Vol. II, p. 743, C. B. Clarke, in 
dealing with the species of Marlea of the Section Eu-Marlea, refers 
all the Indian material to Marlea begonicefolia , Roxb. The alpine speci- 
mens collected in Sikkim by Hooker (Marlea sp.~ 2) at an altitude of 
6,000 — 9,000 ft. are separated as var. alpina , and distinguished from 
the type by “ the leaves not angular, hairy all over beneath and no 
tufts in the nerve-axils."” In the Calcutta Herbarium Sir George 
King separated similar specimens in fruit as Marlea sikkimensis, King 
MSS. In Brandis, Indian Trees (1906), p. 355, the species is briefly 
described under the name of Marlea alpina , Gamble MSS . — — “ Sikkim 
6-9,000 ft., leaves usually not angled or lobed, fruit fin. long, putamen 
crustaceous, one-seeded, one cell abortive/'’ 
Wangerin in his Monograph on AlangTaceae in “ Das Fflanzenreich ” 
IV (1910), 2205., where he includes Marlea in Alangium, makes no 
reference to Brandish note on this new species and refers all the Sikkim 
Himalayan material seen by him to Alangium be gonice folium , and ignores 
the vttiietal name alpina given by Clarke to the original Hookerian 
specimens. 
As these early collections of the alpine plant are somewhat incom- 
plete (this is true at least as far as the specimens we have seen) and as 
Alangium begonia/ olium is a variable, wide-spread species (Kameroons, 
German East Africa, India, Burma, Java, Philippines, China), there was 
no doubt good reason for doubting the validity of a species very incom- 
pletely known, and for treating it as a “ geographical race n merely. 
Later in Kec. Bot. Surv. Xnd., Vol. VI (1912), p. 378, W. W. Smith 
refers to the question, but beyond giving the measurements of the ripe 
fruit has no other data to quote as flowers of the high level species were 
not then available. 
Knowing, however, the very different habit of the two trees in th 
Darjeeling district, one a low level plant and one a high level, the 
present writers were convinced that a careful comparison of the two at 
various times of the year would soon bring out the differences between 
them, and the following note is the result of such observations. Those 
who know the graceful appearance of the low level plant (Alangium 
lego nice folium) with its leaves symmetrically arranged in a very beautiful 
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