Elje l^totiotienlJron ^ocietp ^otes. 
segments which end in single filaments, often fibril-Hke, that interlace to make the 
woolly surface. In R. Falconeri these cup-hairs are much shorter, more 
tumbler-shaped, with a wall of less elongated cells, but fringed in a similar manner. 
The state of our knowledge at this time seems to me to warrant otu* following 
Nuttall in treating R. eximium as a species, and considerations of practical 
convenience in the garden lead to the same determination. No one seeing 
R. EXIMIUM and R. Falconeri, as they are known in our gardens, w^ould call 
them the same, and have we not the authoritj'- of so trenchant a cntic of the w'ays 
of the Botanist in regard to plant-nomenclature as “ W. W.” for saving that 
the gardener abominates botanical varietal names and makes them specific if 
he can, so that R. Falconeri var. eximium has become and will as I think justly 
remain to the gardener, R. eximium ? It is as Mangles pointed out long ago an 
illustration of the divergence in fo^m that is met witli in Sikkim species as one 
travels eastwards. In Bhutan it represents the Sikkim R. Falconeri as in 
other series, R. argenteum is represented by R. grande, R. Aucklandii by 
R. Griffithianum, and so on. 
Rhododendron Falconeri, Hook. /. 
[Figured in Rhod. Sikkim Himal. (1849) t. X ; FI. des Serres V. (1849) t. 477-480, 
XL (1856) t. 1166-1167; Regel, Gartenfl. (1870) t. 659; Bot. Mag. (1856) t. 4924.J 
Everyone interested in Rliododendrons knows this species figured by Hooker 
from plants collected by him in 1849, at an elevation of 10,000 feet, at Tonglo, 
in Sikkim, and through him the species came into general cultivation. Before 
Hooker’s time it had been grown from seeds sent home by Col. Sykes. (Lacaita 
records that in 1913 he could find no R. Falconeri on the top of Tonglo.) 
Since then seeds under the name have been sent home frequentljc Hooker 
recognised the great variabihty of his species, but no Botanist as yet has sifted 
the variations. So far the only names that have been given to forms that 
belong to the aggregate R. Falconeri are ;— 
{a) R. VENOSUM by Nuttall to a Bhutan plant found by Booth which has a 
white underleaf tomentum and which he says “ appears to have come up in 
several collections with the seeds of R. Falconeri distributed by Dr. Hooker.” 
Sir Wm. Hooker in the Botanical Magazine sunk the species in R. Falconeri, 
and there it has remained. 
(b) R. EXIMIUM by Nuttall to the position of which and its distinguishing 
characters I have referred above. 
(c) R. DECiPiENS by Lacaita of which I have also written above. Lacaita 
also refers to another plant with “ flowers crimson in bud ” belonging to the 
series. 
A comprehensive and detailed survey of R. Falconeri is necessar}? to give 
us bedrock for segregation of the forms and determination if possible of natural 
hybrids, and until that comes no useful purpose can be served bj'- discussion. 
I will only note here that in this most hardy plant the cup-hairs of the underleaf 
indumentum in the type Hookerian specimen of R. Falconeri have a distinctive 
form. They are nearly sessile, and the cup is elongated to a shape somew’hat 
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