W^t ^tobobenbron ^ocietp i^ote£{, 
review at the same time. For that I have not found time as yet, and I doubt 
if there be sufficient material in the country for the study. But I am indebted 
to the Director of Kew for kindl}^ supplying me with portions of Lacaita’s 
flowering specimen (No. 464), and of his fruiting specimen which I have analysed, 
and they show that the plants to which they belong are distinct forms within the 
phylum. The fruiting plant collected by Ribu, in October, 1913, is only assumed 
by Lacaita to be his flowering R. decipiens gathered some months earlier, and 
his qualification is justified. The fruit character attached to R. decipiens 
does not belong to it. Ribu’s fruiting plant is in underleaf indumentum 
near to R. Falconer: with perhaps some divergence. In R. decipiens 
Lacaita saw correctly features of R. Hodgsoni in the underleaf indumentum. 
His words “ quasi-lepidotum ” refer to the characteristic agglutinate isolated 
cup-hairs such as are found in R. Hodgsoni. These cup-hairs in R. decipiens 
are many of them those of R. Hodgsoni or very near them, but they are mixed 
with others that recall those of R. Falconeri, and there would seem to be 
therefore constructional ground for the suggestion that we have here a natural 
hybrid. Much more investigation is required before a certain opinion on this 
question can be expressed. Meanwhile I introduce here Lacaita’s R. decipiens 
as one of the Falconeri Series without further comment, but would suggest that 
growers of R. F.\lconeri and R. Hodgsoni should look at their plants for forms 
which may match this one. One hears of the occurrence of purple and rose- 
coloured flowers on plants which have the porte of R. Falconeri but which are 
not R. EXiMiUM and it may be that amongst these R. decipiens will be found, 
for the profusion of the plant in its habitat favours the possibility of the inclusion 
of its seeds in packets of those of its comrades. 
Rhododendron eximium, Nutt. 
[Figured as R. Falconeri var. eximium in Box. Mag. (1893) t. 7317]. 
R. EXIMIUM, discovered before 1853 by Booth “ growing amidst ice and 
snow,” at an elevation of 10-11,000 feet in forests on the rocky ridge and spurs 
of the Oola Mountains in Bhutan, and forming a stately tree 30 feet in height, is 
a plant of cultivation with which Members of the Society will have better 
acquaintance than I have, for we have no large plants of it at Edinburgh. It 
is an offshoot from the immediate phylum of R. Falconeri, and there is the 
question, often discussed, should it be treated as a distinct species or as only a 
variety of R. Falconeri ? If we knew more of the aggregate we call 
R. Falconeri we should be in better position to appraise the value of characters. 
The combination of prominent characters upon which I have relied in the past 
for diagnosis of R. eximium are these ; the persistently bearded petioles, the 
rose or pink-tinted flowers, and the densely glandular ovary without any indu¬ 
mentum hairs and with the glands extending upwards for some distance over 
the lower part of the style. To these another derived from the cup-hairs of the 
underleaf indumentum has to be added. In R. eximium these are sessile long 
slightly funnel-shaped narrow tubes, the wall composed of much elongated 
narrow thickish-walled cells and not forming a uniformly bounded mouth to the 
tube, but split and divided irregularly into coarse much-branched fringed 
211 
