STAFF 
The Director, Mr. M. R. Henderson, was on leave from May until Septem¬ 
ber. Mr. J. Sinclair, Curator of the Herbarium, acted as Director during 
that time. The appointment of Assistant Director has still not been filled. 
Mr. J. Ewart continued to supervise the work of the Agricultural Depart¬ 
ment in addition to his own duties as Curator, Gardens. Mr. G. H. Addison, 
Curator, Parks, returned from vacation leave in May. 
The average daily attendance of the labour force was 75 in the Gardens, 
57 at Government House Domain and 9 in the Reserves. There was no 
serious illness amongst them. 
BOTANICAL WORK IN .1951 
As in the previous two years it is disappointing to have to report 
the impossibility of undertaking field work on any extended scale, both 
because of emergency conditions in the Federation and to a lesser extent 
because of the shortage of senior staff. Mr. J. Sinclair revisited Penang 
for a month in October and was greatly assisted by Mr. Ritchings and the 
staff of the Waterfall Gardens, Penang. His visit resulted in the discovery 
of fourteen species of plants not previously recorded from Penang, of which 
four are new records for Malaya. Another plant, Emhelia macrocarpa , was 
collected for the second time in the same locality that Curtis obtained it 
in 1887. Mr. Sinclair continued collecting on Singapore Island, demonstrat¬ 
ing once more that, even in a well-known area, repeated visits in all seasons 
of the year will reveal new material. He obtained five new records for the 
island during the year: Polyalthia Hookeriana, Centipeda minima, Portulaca 
pilosa, Olax sp. and Nephelium sp. The Centipeda and Portulaca are intro¬ 
duced weeds, the former common in fallow ricefields in India, Siam and 
North Malaya, the latter no doubt introduced by Chinese, who use it 
medicinally. The Olax may be Olax rosea, a species known from Sarawak. 
Other interesting plants found by Mr. Sinclair on Singapore Island include 
Brownlowia lanceolata, found at Ulu Pandan, known many years ago from 
Kranji and Geylang, but probably extinct in both these localities; and 
Artocarpus anisophyllus, a handsome tree found near Seletar Reservoir, 
which was previously known in Singapore only from a single tree in the 
Botanic Gardens. 
Dr. C. X. Furtado, Assistant Botanist, continued his work on Daemono- 
rops, a genus of climbing palms or rattans. Old collections of this genus 
are often badly muddled, due to the variation in the species and to the lack 
of knowledge of them on the part of the collectors, so that it is not un¬ 
common to find parts of two or more species mounted on the same sheet. 
The fragmentary nature of some collections is also a great hindrance to 
the proper understanding of the species. Twenty-nine species of Daemonorops 
are now recognised from Malaya. Dr. Furtado also continued to help in the 
indexing of references to Malayan systematic and economic botany in foreign 
periodicals and in writing up references on herbarium sheets, a procedure 
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