The Lagundi. NQ 3: 61
A brief botanical note by the Revd. B. Scortecchini, dated Thaipeng, 26 January 1886, correcting a plant misidentification in Swettenham’s account of a journey across the Malay Peninsula and discussing the nomenclature of fish-poisoning plants.
Scortecchini argues that the plant Swettenham called Memplas and which an editorial note had tentatively assigned to Michelia is in fact Delima sarmentosa, L., a common sarmentose plant of secondary growth in lowlands, distinguishable by its sandpaper-like foliage and non-solitary flowers (p. 413). He then addresses the broader problem of matching Malay vernacular names to scientific ones, noting that the name Ikan tuba has been applied to several fish-poisoning species—Randia dumetorum, Walsura piscidia, and Anamirta cocculus—and that the name is not exclusive to any single taxon (pp. 413–414). An editorial note appended to the article corrects Scortecchini’s own usage, explaining that tuba is the plant, akar tuba the root used for stupefying fish, and menuba ikan the act of killing fish with tuba; ikan tuba would properly denote a kind of fish, not a plant (p. 415).