BOTANY OF THE LACCADIVES. 
37 
plant from Penang, yet Mr. Baker places the Indian plant in 
C. obtasifoUa and regards the Penang one as a variety of 
C. ensiformis^ 
It is therefore better in the meantime to consider C. turgida 
Grah. to be a plant specifically distinct from C. virosa (the wild form 
ot C. ensiformis), as well as from C. ohtusifulia. 
46. Canavalia obtusifolia DO.; Baker m Hook, f., Flor. 
Brit. Ind., ii., 196 (syn. Dolichos rotundifoliiis Boxb. excl.); 
Clegh., Madr. .Journ. (n. s.), i., t. 4. Dolichos ohcordatus Eoxb., 
Flor. Ind., hi., 303. Probably = 0. lineata DC., Prodr., ii., 404. 
Miuikoi; on sandy beach, Fleming ! 
A littoral species cosmopolitan on tropical shores. 
It is interesting to and on the same island examples of both these 
sea-coast Cwiavalim* The specimens of C. turgida are both in 
flower and with fruit, those of C. obtusifolia are in flower only, but 
are exactl}^ like the Madras ones (in Herb. Calcutta) of Wallich 
(Cat. n. 5532), of Wight and of Gamble. They are well dis¬ 
tinguished, as Mr. Baker indicates, by the racemes in C. obtusifolia 
being much the fewer-flowered, of the two. But the accuracy of 
the nomenclature is extremely doubtfub for Canavalia obtusifolia 
DC. (Prodr., ii., 401) is the exact equivalent of Dolichos obtusifolius 
Lamk. 295),, which in turn is, according to Lamarck 
himself, the plant figured by Rheede [Hort. Malabar., viii., t. 43). 
It is moreover the equivalent of Dolichos rotundifoliiis, Vahl (Symb. 
ii., 81), of which plant De Candolle himself saw a fruiting specimen. 
Roxburgh identified the plant described by Vahl with that figured 
by Rheede.. It seems therefore clear that Rheede’s Katu-Tsjandi, 
Lamarck’s Dolichos obtusifolius, Vahl’s and Roxburgh’s Dolichos 
rotundifoliiis, De Candolle’s Canavalia obtusifolia and Graham’s 
Canavalia turgida are one and the same sea-coast species, which 
species is entitled to the name Canavalia obtusifolia. On the other 
hand, it seems clear from the specimens in Calcutta Herbarium that 
the plant common on the Madras coast figured by Cleghorn, and 
the Chinese plant cultivated in the Calcutta Botanic Garden de¬ 
scribed and figured (Icon. Ined., xx., 136) by Roxburgh as Dolichos 
ohcordatus, are specifically identical; their pods, as figured by 
Roxburgh and Cleghorn, agree well with the pods of Canavalia lineata 
337 
