Tas. 4965. 
ANSELLIA Arricana. 
African Ansellia. 
Nat. Ord. OrncHIDE#.—GYNANDRIA MONANDRIA. 
Gen. Char. Sepala oblonga, carnosa, eequi-patentia, libera. Petala conformia, 
recta, patula, duplo latiora. Labdellum sessile, patulum, trilobum, bilamellatum, 
lobo medio minore verrucoso. Columna elongata, marginata, basi utrinque auri- 
culata. Anthera dilocularis. Podlinia 4, sessilia, basi contigua, duobus dorsa- 
libus multo minoribus; glandula angusta utrinque acuminata.—Caulis elongatus, 
teres, apice tantum foliosus. Folia plicata, coriacea. Panicula ¢erminalis. Lindl. 
ANSELLIA Africana. 
ANSELLIA Africana. Lindl. Bot. Reg. 1844, sub ¢. 12. et 1845, #. 30. 
Var. 8. Natalensis ; flore pallidiore maculis paucis indistinctis, labello minore 
magis elongato. (Tas. NosTr. 4965, f. 3.) 
ANSELLIA gigantea. Reichenb. fil. in Linnea, v. 20. p. 673. 
This is, as Dr. Lindley well observes, a noble plant of consi- 
derable size, the elongated stems, rather than pseudo-bulbs, 
growing in tufts, and each stem bearing a long, gracefully 
drooping panicle of large flowers ; but the flowers are defi- 
cient in brilliancy or even brightness, the ground-colour a pale 
livid green, dashed with copious dark-purple blotches, very in- 
distinct on the outside of the flower: the lip has its large termi- 
nal segment yellow, the brightest part of the blossom. Looking, 
indeed, at a flower individually in full front, it may be called 
handsome : but a degree of dulness and obscurity is given to the 
mass of flowers in the panicle, by so much of their back being 
seen. Its blossoming is, at least with us, in the winter season, 
and our finest plant has at this moment (January, 1857) five 
noble gracefully drooping racemes from as many stems, of 
which racemes our figure represents but a portion of one. It 
is a native of Fernando Po, and the opposite coast. of tropical 
Africa; but Mr. Wilson Saunders has received from Natal a 
plant considered to be the Ansellia gigantea of Reicher bach, 
fil., in Linnea, vol. xx. p. 675, but which appears to us, as sug- 
FEBRUARY IsT, 1857. 
