BOTANY OF THE LACCADIVES. 
57 
Kiltan; on Wedelia scandms in the coast zone, Alcock t Eadamum ; on 
Pleurostylia WigUii^ Fleming ! 
A leafless parasite, common on sea-shores, cosmopohtan in the tropics. 
131. Hernandia peltata Meissn. in DO., Prodr., xv., pt. i, 263 ; 
Hook, f., Flor. Brit. Ind., v, 188. Hernandia mgera Gaertn., Fruct., i., 193, 
t. 40, f. 3 ; Roxb., Flor. Ind., iii, 577, nee Linn. 
Korat; Hume! Minikoi; Fleming ! 
A httoral species extending from the Mascarene Islands and Eastern Africa 
to Ceylon, the Andamans, Malap, Australia and Polynesia; like OcTirosia 
lorhonica this does not occur on the coast of India, though it is found as far 
north as Great Coco on the west and as Mergui on the east of the Andaman Sea. 
Meissner {DC. Prodr., xv, pt. 1, 262—264) omits to quote, and the Flora of 
British India (v, 188) does not cite Roxburgh’s account of Hernandia ovigera 
{Flor. Ind., iii, 577-578), which his own diagnosis clearly shows to be a species 
different from Hernandia ovigera, Linn. {Amoen. Ac., iv, 125), founded on 
Rumf’s flgure {Herh. Amloin., iii, 193, t. 123) of Arlor ovigera. Roxburgh 
notes the discrepancies, and explains them by depreciating Rumf’s drawing. 
In reahty, however, Roxbiu'gh’s description is a most vivid and accm’ate one, 
made from hving specimens of the species named by Meissner {DC. Prodr., xv, 
pt. i, 263), Hernandia peltata. Roxbm’gh cites Gaertner’s figme {Fruct. i, 193, 
t. 40, f. 3) as a “ very accurate” delineation of the fruit of this tree—an exceed¬ 
ingly just remark, which, however, Meissner has overlooked, for he quotes 
Gaertner’s description and figm'e as referring to Lhmaeus’ species, though they 
differ very materially from both Rumf’s figure and M eissner’s own description 
of the fruit of Hernandia ovigera. 
Hernandia peltata, the species now under review, is a purely old-world plant, 
which has been treated by Linnaeus and, with the exceptions of Gaertner and 
Roxburgh, by aU botanists subsequent to Lhmaeus till the appearance of 
Meissner’s treatise (1864) as conspecific with the American Hernandia sonora; 
even now Sir J. D. Hooker {Mor. Brit. Ind., v, 189) suspects that H. peltata 
is no more than a variety of H. sonora. And the basis of the differentiation by 
both Gaertner and Roxbm’gh of the present plant from H. sonora does not he in 
the differences between the two plants that Meissner has pointed out, but in the 
fact that Lhmaeus included under H. sonora not merely the American tree to 
which Meissner would restrict that name, as well as the Ceylon tree, which is 
undoubtedly H. peltata, but also—though doubtfully and with the remark “ sed 
fructus alienus" {Amcen. Ac., iv, 117)—the tree figm-ed by Rumf {Herl. Amloin., 
ii, 257, t. 85) under the name Arlor regis. Beheving, apparently, that Rumf’s 
Arlor regis was, as Linnaeus thought, a Hernandia—^ behef perhaps partly just— 
but realising that it could scarcely be the tree he had before him, and seeing that 
357 
