LA 
BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CampripGr, Massacuusettrs, Marcu 3, 1944 Vo.t. 11, No. 7 
AFRICAN ORCHIDS. XIV 
BY 
V.S. SUMMERHAYES 
(Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) 
ANCISTRORHYNCHUS Finet 
In 1837 Lindley described Angraecum clandestinum 
from a plant cultivated in Messrs. Loddiges’ nursery at 
Hackney, while in 1862 in his classical paper on West 
African orchids, he described A. capitatum, which was 
collected by Barter near the Brass River in Southern 
Nigeria. Ten years later the younger Reichenbach pub- 
lished a description of a species from the famous living 
collection of W.W.Saunders under the name of Listro- 
stachys cephalotes. He pointed out its affinity with An- 
graecum capitatum Lindl. and for the first time clearly 
described the remarkable folded rostellum, which is actu- 
ally common to all three species mentioned. Rolfe seems 
to have missed the significance of this feature, for in the 
Flora of Tropical Africa, although he places the above 
species, and also two additional ones of the same affinity, 
in the genus Listrostachys, he separates L. clandestina 
trom the others and only refers vaguely to the rostellum 
in the specific descriptions. Instead he places greater 
emphasis on the occurrence of the flowers in short dense 
heads. 
It was not until 1908 that Finet created the genus 
Ancistrorhynchus, containing two properly described and 
one imperfect species, the genus being especially charac- 
[ 201 
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(HARVARD 
LAPD CITY 
IUNIVERSI1 
i] 7 
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