BOTANY OF THE LACCADIVES. 
55 
The “ weed ” has probably been introduced unintentionally by man. The 
“ shore” form very probably owes its introduction to the agency of sea-bu’ds, 
though it may have been introduced by ocean-currents. 
124. Pisonia alba Spanoghe in Linnsea, xv, 342 ; Hook, f., Flor, 
Brit. Ind., iv, 711. 
Bitrapar ; Fleming ! 
A httoral species confined, if Spanoghe’s species be really distinct from all the 
Polynesian and Malayan ones, to the Andamans and Mcobars. The species is 
rare in the Andamans beach forests {Kurz), but it is plentiful on the shores of 
Narcondam and on those of Batti Malv—one of the Nicobar group. The tree 
is only known in India and Ceylon as a cultivated species ; but as it does 
not occiu' on any of the other islands of the group, and as Bitrapar is an 
uninhabited island, the presence of the species in the sea-coast jungle here must be 
independent of human interference. Its fruits may have been introduced by 
birds, smce the glutinous lines along then* angles admirably adapt them for this 
mode of dispersal; but as the majority of the birds that visit Bitra must be 
sea-fowl, it is much more fikely that the species has been introduced by means of 
ocean-cmTents. Though not wild, it is frequently cultivated in Ceylon {e.g., at 
Colombo) near the sea—indeed away from the sea it refuses to grow—and, if the 
tree does not exist iu Malaya, Ceylon, cultivated trees may be supposed to have 
yielded the fruits that have reached the Laccadives. One point, however, against 
the species being confined, as an indigenous tree, to the Andamans is that the 
species has been long cultivated in India and Ceylon, and it is therefore extremely 
unlikely that the plants originally introduced into India came from that group 
of islands, with which, save for a short period in the end of the last centmy, there 
was, tfil thirty years ago, practically no communication. It appears, indeed, as 
Sh- Joseph Hooker suggests, to be little more than a form of the Polynesian 
Pisonia inermis Forst. 
AMARANTACE^. 
125. iLmarantus viridis Liim., Sp. PI. (ed. ii), 1405 ; Ptoxb., Flor. 
Ind., iii, 605 ; Hook, f., Flor. Brit. Ind., iv, 720. 
Muiikoi; Meming ! 
A weed of waste places, cosmopolitan in the tropics. 
126. .Slrua lanata Juss. in Ann. Mus., xi, 131; Hook, f., Flor. 
Brit. Ind., iv, 728. Acliyranthes lanata Linn., Sp. PI. 204 ; Eoxb., Flor. 
Ind., i, 676. 
Bitrapar; Hume! Kalpeni; Alcoclc ! Kadamum; very common, Feming ! 
Akati; Fleming! Muiikoi; common, Fleming ! 
355 
