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THE INDIAN SPECIES OF ERIOCAULON *[1]
By P. F. Fyson, M.A., F.L.S.,
Presidency College, Madras.
The investigation of the Indian Species of Eriocaulon on which the following account is written arose out of the difficulty found in determining some of my own collections in South India, which led me to examine the collections in the herbaria of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, and at the Agricultural Station, Coimbatore (Madras), and subsequently in those of the Peradiniya Gardens, Ceylon, the Forest College, Dehra Dun, and the Agricultural College, Poona, for types not found in the two former.
From an examination of the sheets in the Calcutta herbarium it was soon clear that other collectors besides myself have found the identification of species difficult. As far as India is concerned there are, if we exclude local Floras which have largely followed the F.B.I., only two works in which descriptions of the species are given : Hooker's Flora of British India, Vol. VI, (1894) and Ruhland's monograph in Engler's Das Palanzenreich (1903). The former of these is naturally now incomplete, being without species which have been founded since its date. The latter is not available to the ordinary botanist, and even if it were is, since it contains all the species of the world, too cumbersome for the collector. It is therefore thought that a revision of the Indian species accompanied by illustrations would perhaps be welcomed by collectors of this interesting but difficult genus.
It may not be out of place in this connection to note that the identification of a species from its published description alone is nearly always fraught with some, often with very grave risk of error; and that only by reference to the actual type sheet can certainty be attained. None of the species of this genus were, as far as I know, founded in this country, so that the actual specimens from which they were described are not here but in Europe. We have however in this country duplicates of many of the type sheets, and though the possibility of
- ↑ This paper was accepted by the editor of the Records of the Botanical Survey of India in September, 1918, but owing to congestion of work for that periodical is by his permission now printed here. A preliminary abstract appeared in this Journal, Vol. L, p. 49.
