Aerides undulata J. E. Smith, because of an earlier Aerides 
praemorsa by Willdenow (1805: 103). 
Keeping the chronology, we must now introduce a new plant 
listed by J. E. Smith in Rees’s Cyclopedia side by side with 
Aerides undulata, namely ‘‘The Rigid Air-Blossom’’, Aerides 
rigida Buch.-Ham. ex Smith. It is clear from his notes that Smith 
had not seen actual specimens of this plant, but based his de- 
scription on a drawing of a Nepalese plant by Buchanan. This 
drawing is known to exist in three copies, one of which is found 
in the India Office in London and is completely colored, while 
the other two in the British Museum and in the Linnean Society 
are only partly colored. They are otherwise identical and all 
three lack details of the flower. According to Miss Phyllis Ed- 
wards in the British Museum, their copy belongs to a set pro- 
vided by Buchanan for Dr. John Fleming. There is no doubt, 
however, that the copy in the Linnean Society was the one upon 
which J.E. Smith based his description of Aerides rigida. With 
the kind permission of the Council of the Linnean Society this 
drawing is reproduced here on a smaller scale. See Plate 9. It is 
labelled ‘‘Epidendrum rigidum B.’’, the *‘B”’ indicating Bucha- 
nan; the other copies have the locality ‘“‘Nepaul”’ added. 
A difficulty with Aerides rigida is that no corroborating 
specimen seems to exist which could be considered as the 
holotype, and therefore, we have to rely on the above-men- 
tioned drawing which is unsatisfactory because of the lack of 
floral details. The only relevant material | have come upon is a 
specimen in the Wallich herbarium at Kew, No. 7325, collected 
by Buchanan-Hamilton on August 21, 1808, in Gulapore called 
by him Cymbidium praemorsum, Swartz’s old name for Thalia 
Maravara. The complication here is that Lindley in Wallich’s 
Catalogue listed No. 7325 as Vanda multiflora. Although 
Lindley does not cite this number in his “‘Genera and Species of 
Orchidaceous Plants’ (1833: 216), this collection must be the 
one he referred to when he added “‘Napalia, Hamilton, Wallich”’ 
to the habitat of Vanda multiflora, the type of which, however, 
came from China. At the same place Lindley lists as a synonym 
‘‘Aerides rigidum Smith! in Rees Suppl.’’. The exclamation 
mark can only indicate that at the time he considered Wallich 
7325 to be identical with it. He did not draw the natural conse- 
quence of this by renaming the Chinese plant Vanda rigida as he 
should have done. Actually, Wallich 7325 could well be consid- 
51 
