Meconopsis and Cathcartia . 363 
and to the indumentum of M '. napaulensis prove that his species cannot be Royle’s 
M. aculeata. Moreover, when it is recollected that De Candolle uses the phrase 
‘ capsulis echinatis ’ with regard to his Meconopsis petiolaia , which is Chelidonium 
diphyllum , Michx., it will be realized that he does not necessarily imply that the 
capsules of M. napaulensis are prickly ; and an examination of the actual specimen 
which De Candolle had before him shows that its capsules are not prickly and that it 
is not the plant named M. aculeata by Royle. 
D. Don, a year after De Candolle’s diagnosis was published, described two 
Nepalese species of Meconopsis from specimens sent by Wallich to Lambert at the 
same time that M. napaulensis was sent by Wallich to De Candolle. One of these 
two had been named Polychaetia paniculata by Wallich before the specimens left 
India. For some reason Wallich did not send examples of either of these two species 
to De Candolle ; on the other hand, Wallich evidently sent no example of M. napaulen- 
sis to Lambert. Don did not admit that Meconopsis was generically distinct from 
Papaver ; it is therefore not surprising that he could not follow Wallich in considering 
Polychaetia separable from Meconopsis. But Don did take up Wallich’s manuscript 
specific nam z paniculata — a circumstance so far fortunate, since it enables us, knowing 
as we do the plant to which Wallich gave the name Polychaetia paniculata , to state 
with certainty what the plant described by Don as Papaver paniculaium really is. 
When in 1830 Wallich distributed, independently of his communications at an 
earlier date to De Candolle and to Lambert, specimens of all the species of Meconopsis 
in the Calcutta Herbarium, he issued them under the following numbers: — 8121, 
8122, 8123/a, 8123/b, 8124, 8125, and 8126/E. The last of these numbers, 
collected in Kumaon, is M. robusta, Hook. f. and Thoms. ; it is evident that its issue 
under the name Argemone mexicana was a mere accident. Of the others 8125, from 
Nepal, is M. simplicifolia , Walp., not previously sent to De Candolle, though it was 
previously sent to Lambert, in whose herbarium Don named and described it as 
Papaver simplicifolium ; 8124, collected in Kumaon by Blinkworth, but neither sent 
to De Candolle nor to Lambert, is M. robusta , Hook. f. and Thoms. The plant from 
Nepal to which Wallich in India attached the name Polychaetia paniculata , was issued 
in 1830 under the Catalogue number 8123/b; this plant, though not sent to 
De Candolle before 1824, was previously communicated under this manuscript name 
to Lambert, and was consequently described by Don as Papaver paniculaium. As 
regards the locality of 8123/a Wallich seems to have been in doubt; the entry against 
it in the Catalogue is ‘ Kumaon ? ’. There is, however, no doubt with regard to its 
identity ; it is not M. robusta , Hook. f. and Thoms., the only species of this group 
that, so far as we know, occurs in Kumaon ; it is a form of, and is hardly varietally 
separable from, M. paniculata. The next number, 8122, from Kumaon, is M. aculeata , 
Royle, and calls for no remark. The only other number, 8121, which came from 
Nepal, is found on comparing it with the specimen in the Prodromus Herbarium at 
Geneva to be the plant which Wallich had previously sent to Geneva at the time that 
he sent M. simplicifolia and M. paniculata to Lambert, and is therefore the plant that 
De Candolle described as M. napaulensis. 
The reduction by D. Don of this species, specimens of which he clearly had 
never seen, to his own very distinct Papaver paniculaium has already been commented 
