To verify Lindley’s observations I started to look for good 
material of the Chinese plants. There are very few collections 
and mostly they are without flowers. I found one of Hance’s 
good specimens in the British Museum, and from Hongkong Dr. 
Lau sent me afresh plant. In Singapore I obtained a flower from 
a Hainan plant. Champion’s plant in Kew had two flowers left, 
strongly glued to the sheet for more than 100 years — I loosened 
one for dissection. As can be seen on Plate 10, all these flowers 
are very hairy on the lower part of the lip and have a longitudinal 
hairy keel running down in the sack, ‘‘basi linear media pilosa in 
calcar decurrente aucto’’. Naturally, we cannot exclude the 
possibility that Mr. Cattley’s plant with ‘‘calcare vacuo” is so 
rare that it has not turned up for more than 150 years, but I 
believe we are safe to conclude that the eastern Acampe multi- 
flora does not differ from the Western plants in this important 
character. Moreover, I have not been able to see any other 
differences in the flowers. 
The distribution of Acampe longifolia, of which the type- 
specimen is Wallich 7322 from Tavoy, has not been extended 
until Hooker (1890: 62) mentions that there is a picture of it from 
Sikkim in the Calcutta Herbarium; he also cites a collection from 
Upper Assam by Mann. Since 1890 several collections have 
been reported from the Himalayas through Thailand, Yunnan 
and Indochina to the Malayan Peninsula. Most of the older 
herbarium sheets have passed through many hands and they 
carry two, three or more annotations. The question is: are there 
differences in the flowers of these plants? Ridley, (1896: 358) 
who considers Acampe longifolia conspecific with Vanda mul- 
tiflora (noting them both in Tenasserim, but not in the Hima- 
layas or China), says that his Acampe penangiana differs in 
having no spur. Guillauman (1930: 336) does not link his new 
Vanda viminea from Indochina to any other species, but just 
declares that ‘‘il est inconcevable qu'une Orchidée de cette 
taille.... soit nouvelle pour la science’, in which he is right 
indeed. Hunt (1972: 98) localizes Acampe multiflora in the 
Himalayas and limits Acampe longifolia to Thailand and the 
Malayan Peninsula, declaring it nevertheless a synonym of the 
Nepalese Aerides rigida. He emphatically states that A. mud/ti- 
flora is a distinct species. 
Accordingly, I have studied flowers of plants from different 
places. I have had available the type-specimen of Vanda longi- 
58 
