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Prain. — A Review of the genera 
lobed or only toothed; (2) including M. robusta , M. napaulensis, and M. Wallichii, 
with much divided leaves. Of these three alternative groupings, that which is based 
on the differences as regards gynoecium and fruit is doubtless the most natural ; it 
has the further advantage of according best with the differences as regards colour of 
petals, for the forms with 8-n-valved ovaries and persistently adpressed setae 
have the flowers yellow' or ivory-white, the forms with 5-7-valved ovaries and 
ultimately spreading setae have the petals blue or red. If, therefore, reduction be 
insisted upon, we may with some justification recognize but two species, viz.:— 1, 
M. paniculata , including, as a variety, M. superba , and, as a subspecies, M. robusta ; 
2, M. napaulensis , including, as a variety, M. Wallichii. The confusion indicated by 
the synonymy has not, however, been altogether the result of a difficulty in deciding 
which of these mutually incompatible differential characters may be the more 
important. It has largely had a purely bibliographical origin and has resulted from 
the reduction by D. Don (Prodr. Flor. Nepal., 197) of De Candolle’s Meconopsis 
napaulensis to his own Papaver paniculalum , which is Meconopsis paniculaia. Why 
Don made this suggestion is not at all clear ; his account of M. paniculata is 
by no means unsatisfactory; even if it had been so, an accident has made the mis- 
identification of Don’s species impossible. His description does not tally with 
De Candolle’s brief diagnosis of M. napaulensis , and an examination of De 
Candolle’s original specimen shows that the two are different, both as regards 
foliage and as regards fruit. Don’s erroneous reduction has, however, been so 
generally followed, that in horticulture it has become usual to associate De Candolle’s 
name for the red-flowered member of this group with sometimes one, sometimes 
another of the yellow-flowered ones. The writer attempted in 1895 (Journ. As. Soc. 
Beng., lxiv. 2. 317, 318) to unravel this somewhat tangled skein, and tried to make it 
clear that what has so often been taken for M. napaulensis is really M. paniculata. 
A reference to one of the most recent resumes of our information with regard to this 
genus Flora and Sylva. iii. 81-84) shows, however, that the old confusion is still 
perpetuated, and that the only result of the writer’s previous note on the subject has 
been to originate a new confusion ; the name ‘ M. nepalensis,’ which belongs to 
a red-flowered species, is still associated with one of the yellow-flowered ones, and- the 
name ‘ M. paniculata,’ which belongs to this yellow-flowered one, has been transferred 
to a second yellow-flowered species which has already been properly named and 
accurately described by Hooker and Thomson as M. robusta. Under the circum- 
stances it seems advisable to state the facts once more as explicitly as possible. 
The specimen on which De Candolle based his diagnosis of M. ?iapaulensis was 
collected by Wallich in Nepal in 1819, and was sent by him to Geneva prior to 1824. 
De Candolle’s diagnosis, though brief, is, when taken in conjunction with collateral 
evidence, adequate for the recognition of the plant. 
It has been shown under M. aculeata that Jacquemont believed the plant which 
Royle subsequently so named to be De Candolle’s M. napaulensis , that Honigberger 
also held this view, and that at a later date Falconer was of the same opinion. 
Possibly these botanists were led to this conclusion because De Candolle has 
described M. napaulensis as being ‘capsulis valde echinatis,’ a phrase appropriate to 
the prickly capsules of M. aculeata. However, De Candolle’s references to the style 
