accepted Gussonea in his general treatment of the An- 
graecoid orchids. Untortunately Gussonea A. Rich. is a 
later homonym, the name having been used previously 
by Sprengel, under the alternative spelling Gussonia, tor 
a genus of Huphorbiaceae now considered congeneric with 
Sebastiana. The next available name is Microcoelia pro- 
posed by Lindley in 1880 (Gen. & Sp. Orch. Pl. 60) for 
u Madagascar plant, and this is undoubtedly the correct 
name tor the leafless Angraecoid orchids assuming that 
they are all congeneric. 
Schlechter states in his introductory remarks (I.¢. p. 72) 
that the leafless African species all possess a similar col- 
umn structure and on that basis he puts them into a sin- 
gle genus, Gussonea. However, he points out elsewhere 
(p. 98) that the structure of his Angraecum macrorrhyn- 
chium (Gussonea macrorrhynchia Schitr.) is so different 
from that of other species that it may prove to belong 
to a separate genus. He divides Gussonea into two sec- 
tions, namely, section Wu-gussonea with elongated climb- 
ing stems, and section T'aeniophylloides with a very short 
stem, the whole plant strongly resembling members of 
the genus T'aeniophyllum. He gives no correlated floral 
differences so presumably he had detected none of any 
significance. 
Finet (in Mém. Soc. Bot. France 9 (1907) 84, 85, 47, 
50), on the other hand, placed the species in several differ- 
ent genera, but his genera are many of them so artificial | 
that his separation of the leafless species is little evidence 
of their real distinctiveness. It has, however, been sug- 
gested, for example, by Braid (in Bull. Mise. Inform. 
Kew (1926) 824) and the present writer (in Bull. Mise. 
Inform. Kew (1986) 282) that the striking common fea- 
ture of leaflessness may have been given too much weight 
and that perhaps several genera are represented among 
the various species described. If this be true, do some of 
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