356 ME. G. BEXTHAM OX OKCHIDE.E. 



first rightly described as a Habenaria, and "afterwards generieally 

 separated on account of a slight cohesion of the petals with the 

 dorsal sepal. 



The stigmatic differences in Habenaria to which so much 

 importance has been sometimes attached are often difficult to 

 observe in dried specimens; but all the forms appear to be 

 reducible to one type. The ordinary concave stigma under the 

 rostellum is- entire or more or less divided into two lobes, or is 

 attached by two processes projecting on each side at the base of 

 the rostellum. Sometimes the central stigma is evidently viscid 

 and effectively stigmatic, whilst the lateral processes are reduced 

 to dry tubercles sessile at the base of the rostellum ; sometimes 

 the central stigma remains perfect, whilst the lateral tubercular 

 sessile processes have been shown to be equally capable of stig- 

 matic action ; whilst in a large number of species, especially 

 amongst the tropical ones, the central stigma appears perfectly 

 dry and ineffective or quite disappears, and the tubercular or 

 papillose apices of the long processes are alone stigmatic ; and 

 between these extremes it has appeared to me that every inter- 

 mediate can be observed. So also with regard to the anther-cells, 

 the short parallel cells confined to the erect portion of the 

 anthers of some Gymnadenics are most gradually connected 

 with those of the Bo?iatea-like Habenarice, in which their elon- 

 gated bases are carried along the top of the column and up the 

 erect lobes or sides of the rostellum even to a level with the apex, 

 of the anther. In a few species the glands of the pollinarium 

 are, after dehiscence, half covered by the slightly dilated ends of 

 the valves of the anther- cells, which has given rise to the pro- 

 posed genera Pcrularia and Bercemeria, but is more or least 

 observable in a few species belonging to other sections. 



In the preceding genera of this subtribe the rostellum is 

 usually flat, or nearly so, and narrow between the glands ; but in 

 the following five, which some authors have proposed to unite 

 with Habenaria, the rostellum is dilated and raised between the 

 pollinary glands or the lobes, either broad, convex, and almost 

 helmet-shaped, or folded into a narrow much raised ridge. These 

 genera are: — Biplomeris, Dou (Diplochihts, Lindl.), two Hima- 

 layan species; Bonatea, Wi lid., three South-African species, 

 perhaps reducible to two B. speciosa, Willd., B. foliosa, Lindl., 

 and B. Boltoni, Harv.), the other supposed species of Bonalea, 

 chiefly East-Indian, being truly referrible to Habenaria ; Cynor- 



