"It was collected in 1834 by Mr. Henchman, in the valley ofCuman- 

 coa, in Venezuela. Mr. H. describes it as growing suspended by long 

 fibrous roots from the lateral branches of trees, so that its pseudo-bulbs, 

 which in their growing state are uncommonly brittle, hang downwards 

 and wave in the wind, which Mould otherwise be sufficient to break them. 

 It has a very delicate perfume in the morning, but appears to lose it in 

 the heat of the day. The remains of spikes have been seen, which had 

 produced ten flowers." 



Shortly afterwards Mr. Bateman forwarded it from Knypersley, with 

 this memorandum : — 



" The plant which produced the specimen from which your drawing 

 is made, I derived in September (1835) from Messrs. Lowe and Co. of 

 the Cla])ton Nursery. It liad then been only recently imported, and was 

 just beginning to push a shoot, which has ever since continued to increase 

 in length and strength. It is now, although apparently far from com- 

 pleted, upwards of two feet long, and equal in girth to the stem of an 

 ordinary Cyrtopodium. It is suspended from a rafter in a pot (filled 

 with broken potsherds and turfy peat), and its stems are completely pen- 

 dulous, like those of some eastern Dendrobia. Common as is this pendent 

 habit in the Old World, our present subject presents, as far as I am aware, 

 the only example of its occurrence in the New. It may also be worthy 

 of remark that the fleshy stems of this species, although apparently similar 

 in structure to those of Cyrtopodium, Catasetum, Myanthus, Mormodes, 

 Cycnoches, and the like, seem utterly incapable of pushing a shoot after 

 the radical eye is gone, several healthy pieces having remained with- 

 out breakinfj for more than a year; whereas from any of the above-named 

 genera, under similar circumstances, plants would have been long since 

 obtained." 



With regard to the aflinity of this genus, although it has in so many 

 respects the habit of certain genuine Dendrobia, and in others that of 

 Cyrtopodium and its allies, it is in reality essentially different from those 

 genera, and much more nearly akin to Epidendrum and its section. Its 

 pollen masses consist of two yellow plates, j)laced side by side in the bed 

 of the anther, united at the back and slightly notched on the outer edge, 

 so that it is in reality four-lobed, the lobes being extremely unequal ; each 

 lobe has a thickened margin, and rising up, overlies and conceals four 

 other lobes of a thicker texture and smaller size, two of which arise from 

 the back and two from the front of the inner edge of the principal lobes 

 of the plate above described. This remarkable structure may be theore- 

 tically described as being equivalent to eight pollen masses, of which the 

 straps of connection, such as exist in all Epidendrefe, are run together 

 into two plates, from an expansion of the edges of which the pollen 

 masses appear to spring. 



This is a very showy plant ; the colours of the flower being very 

 bright, its texture firm, and its surface even and waxy. The lip, 

 with its crimson veins, and narrow elevations radiating from the base, is 

 especially worthy of attention. 



Fio-. 1. is a representation of the upper portion of the column; 2. is 

 the lip laid open ; 3. are the pollen masses spread open, to shew their 

 structure. 



