Flora of Kwangtung and Hongkong/Sources of information regarding the flora
Sources of information regarding the flora.—It may be said, in the first place, that no information of any kind has been or can be collected from Chinese sources, which could be usefully included in the kind of Flora expected by western readers. The foundation of this Flora is the Colonial Herbarium at Hongkong, to which reference has already been made. The Kwangtung material therein has practically all been collected by the European officers of the Botanical and Forestry Department and their Chinese assistants. Such records in the works enumerated below as were additional to the herbarium records have been included with them in the list. Special mention must be made of Forbes and Hemsley's "Enumeration" which has been utilised largely throughout. The Kwantung records in the herbaria of Kew and the British Museum are taken up usually on that authority alone, as no collections from the province of any importance have been added to them since the publication of the work.
There are, however, several large collections on the continent which remain to be searched for Kwangtung records. The herbarium, for instance, of the late Drake del Castillo contains many collections of Kwangtung plants. They, with the rest of his herbarium, were bequeathed to the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, but owing to want of space at the Jardin des Plantes they still lie at his house in Paris, where they can be seen on application. The Paris Herbarium itself has not been consulted: it doubtless contains much material which would add to our knowledge, of the provincial flora.
The principal books from which information was derived were
- Bentham's Flora Hongkongensis.
- Forbes and Hemsley's Enum. Pl. China.
- Finet and Gagnepain's Flore de l'Asie Orientale.
- Miquel in Journ. de Bat. Néerl. i. (Krone's plants.)
- Journal of Botany.
- Hooker's Icones Plantarum.
- Kew Bulletin.