EXPLANATION OF THE ILLUSTRATION 
CATASETUM MacrocaRpuM L.C.Rich. ex Kunth. 1, a flower (label- 
lum sectioned longitudinally) of the female, redrawn from H. 
Criger’s plate in the Journal of the Linnean Society 8, Bot. 
(1865) t. 9. The bee having gnawed the tissues on the anterior 
wall of the helmet-shaped labellum is shown leaving the flower. 
The pollen-masses from a male flower previously visited are being 
deposited on the stigmas, The male of C.macrocarpum (C.tridenta- 
tum of Darwin’s writings, ef. fig. 2), is markedly unlike the female 
in the structure of the column. It differs from the male of C.bar- 
batum (Myanthus barbatus) in the ventricose labellum and non- 
resupinate flowers. Schomburgk and Darwin believed that the 
female of both C.macrocarpum and C. barbatum represented a single 
species, namely Monachanthus viridis. It was this belief, formed 
through ignorance of the fact that the females of several species 
of Catasetum may be puzzlingly alike although the males are 
strikingly dissimilar, which contributed to the errors in Dar- 
win’s observations and conclusions. When a plant, supposedly 
Monachanthus viridis (in reality the female of C.macrocarpum), 
produced male flowers of C.macrocarpum (C.tridentatum of Schom- 
burgk and Darwin) and when a plant of C.barbatum ( Myanthus 
barbatus) produced typical male flowers, and females (supposedly 
Monachanthus viridis), simultaneously, in a single raceme, it was 
thought that two male forms (representing the genera Catasetum 
and Myanthus) were associated with a single female form (a 
Monachanthus) and it was assumed that Calasetum tridentatum, 
Monachanthus viridis and Myanthus barbatus were all referable to 
Catasetum barbatum ( Myanthus barbatus). To account for the dif- 
ference between the males Darwin proposed that those of Myan- 
thus barbatus should be regarded as being hermaphrodites. This 
was probably the crowning glory of biological and taxonomic 
misconception. 2, a male flower, redrawn from Hooker’s Exotic 
Flora 2 (1825) t. 151. 
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