BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
A CONTRIBUTION TO OUR KNOWLEDGE 
OF THE ORCHIDS OF SPANISH HONDURAS 
PART I 
BY 
OaKES AMES 
Winiiam Borrinc Hemsiey, in 1888, published 
in Godman and Salvin’s Biologia Centrali- Americana,an 
enumeration of the plants that had been collected in 
Middle America. For the Republic of Honduras he found 
records of less than one hundred and sixty species in- 
cluding four orchids, and of these several were cited in 
his enumeration on questionable evidence. He stated that 
his only reason for giving Honduras a place in his geo- 
graphical tables was to show how little was then known 
about the Honduranian flora. Rudolf Schlechter,in 1918, 
published his Kritische Aufzihlung der bisher aus Zen- 
tral-Amerika bekanntgewordenen Orchidaceen. For 
Honduras he cited every species of orchid for which he 
found a record. In his remarks about the flora he simply 
reiterated the statement made by Hemsley and charac- 
terized Honduras as being botanically the least known 
of the Central American countries. He included fifteen 
genera and eighteen species of orchids in his enumeration. 
We know now that two of these species are from British 
rather than Spanish Honduras and that two are as yet 
not known to be natives of Central America. 
Until 1923, orchidological exploration in Honduras 
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