Page:The Journal of Indian Botany.djvu/571

THE INDIAN SPECIES OF ERIOCAULON. 135

The eriocaulace^: are a very distinct family of flowering plants which in one respect occupies among the Monocotyledons a position analagous to that of the compositae among the Dicotyledons The flowers are very small and aggregated into a head, which is enclosed at first and subsequently backed by a involucre of outer bracts. Unlike the compositae the flowers are unisexual, and are typical- ly complete in every other respect, that is they possess complete whorls of sepals and petals, and either two of stamens or one of carpels. The genus Eriocaulon with its three sepals, three petals, and three carpels in the female flower ; and 3 sepals usually united into a spathe-like calyx, a trumpet-shaped 3-lobed corolla and stamens in the male, comes nearest to the monocotyledonous type : but we find two-merous flowers in some species ; and in some, otherwise trime- rous, two sepals only, or two or fewer petals, obviously by reduction.

The genus was founded by Linnaeus in 1742, and subsequently placed by Kunth along with one or two related genera as a tribe of the order RESTIACE.E. Martius, reviewing this tribe in 1835, raised it to the rank of a distinct order, the Eriocaulonaceae, a name afterwards changed by Eichard to ERIOCAULACEAE. Koerniche wrote a mono- graph with very full descriptions and several new species in 1856.* Steudel gave short descriptions of all the known species in his Syn. PI. Cyperacearum in 1858 and other authors, notably Sir J. D. Hooker, have founded species in " Floras " of Ceylon, India, Tropical Africa and Brazil. In 1903 there appeared in Engler's Das Pflanzen- reich a monograph by Euhlaud of all the species known in the family, with several new ones founded by him. The number of species des- cribed was 420, of which 200 belonged to Paepalanthus found only in America, and 193 to Eriocaulon. The latter genus is distributed all over the warmer parts of the world, being found in America, Africa, Asia and Australia, and even in Europe as far west as Ireland. But although there are in India some fifty species, occurring over tho whole of South India as for North as Mount Aboo and the Central Provinces, and along the Himalayas from tho eastern end to Dehra Dun, there are no collections from the United Provinces or the Punjab. In India therefore excluding the Himalayas, the genus is confined to the tropics.

Most species of Eriocaulon grow exclusively in wet places, a few only fully submerged, and only one or two I believe in ground always dry enough to be firm. It has long been recognised that the conditions of water and marsh are much more uniform the world over


 * Linuaea, Vol, XXVII.