48
Scientific Memoirs by
meg, being of a depressed-spheroidal form something like that of an early Dutch
turnip. Until quite ripe their colour is green, but as they approach maturity
the colour changes to a pale dirty yellow. On their sides there are occasionally
to be seen small pale warts and larger, brownish, scarious scales. This species is
common over a large part of India. It occurs also in Ceylon, Burma, the
Malayan Peninsula, Hong-Kong, and Australia. Its Sanscrit and Bengali name
is Kaho Dumbara ; in Hindi it is known as Kagsha, Gobla, or Konea Dumbar ;
while in the Punjab the plant receives the local names of Daduri, Degar, and
Rumbul ; and in Oudh that of Kat Gularia. The Telugu-speaking people of
the Peninsula call it Boda-mamadi ; in the neighbourhood of Bombay it is named
Gan Dumbar. The Burmese call it Kadot. What the Tamil name for it is
I have not been able to find out with certainty.
Before proceeding further, it will be necessary to give a short sketch of the
structure of the kind of inflorescence known familiarly as fig, and botanically
as receptacle or cœnanthium. A fig then is an expanded fleshy axis which,
by the curving upwards of its circumferential part (or organic base), is converted
into a kind of flask, on the inner surface of the walls of which a number of
minute flowers are arranged. These walls are of a more or less fleshy character,
and in the edible species they form the eatable part. The mouth of the flask
is occupied by a number of rows of bracts, which, in the majority of the species,
so interlock as practically to close it. The upper rows of these bracts— i.e.,
those towards the outer part of the mouth—curve upwards and project therefrom
so as to be visible externally, and they form what is known as the umbilicus of the
fig. The middle rows are horizontal in direction, and they interlock so as com-
pletely to occlude the mouth of the flask or receptacle, and to render its cavity
a closed chamber. The lower rows curve downwards into the cavity and often
envelope the flowers in their immediate neighbourhood. These arrangements
will be better understood by looking at Figs. 3 and 4, Plate X. The minute
flowers which are attached to the inner walls of this closed flask or receptacle are
unisexual. They are of three kinds—male, female, and pseudo-female or gall.
The existence of unisexual male and female flowers in the genus Ficus has long
been known ; but the existence of the singular phenomenon of pseudo-female
or gall flowers is a recent discovery, made independently by Count Solms-
Laubach and myself. Count Solms-Laubach's observations on the matter are
published in Botanische Zeitung. for 1885, Nos. 33 to 36.
As far as external appearances go, the figs of F. hispida are all pretty
much alike. But, on making a vertical section of a few of them, it will be found
that, as regards contents, they are of two types. One set of figs contains male
flowers and pseudo-females or galls ; another set contains neither males nor
galls, but is exclusively occupied by fertile female flowers. Let us examine one
of the former set first. Near the apex of the fig—that is, just under the mouth
of it—there are situated a number of male flowers which form a distinct zone.