leaves, loosely 5-8-fl., bracts minute, flowers, with the ovaries, 

 5-8 mill, long; side sepals lanceolate-oblong sub-obtuse concave ; 

 odd sepal ovate, very obtuse; petals broadly ovate or suborbicular, 

 a little shorter than the sepals ; limb of the lip transversely 

 oblong, obscurely 3-lobed, intermediate lobe obtusely acute, a 

 little longer than the sepals and petals ; spur cylindrical, with a 

 wide mouth, obtuse, incurved or hooked, 4-5 mill, long ; anther 

 rounded, very obtuse; pollinia 2, distant, nearly hemispherical, 

 each upon a linear flat incurved stipes lying on either margin 

 of the rostellum ; glands 2, ovate, distant ; rostellum beak-like 

 cuneate-oblong, the apex bent down into the mouth of the spur. 



Described from several dried specimens and flowers preserved 

 in glycerine. Flowers white or cream-coloured. This little 

 species seems very well marked by its laxly few-flowered raceme, 

 and the very much incurved blunt spur, large for the size of its 

 small flower. Eeichenbach placed the species in Aeranthus, and 

 Bentham in Mystacidium. According to the definition of the 

 latter author, the only constant difference between the two 

 genera (Angraecum and Mystacidium) is that the stipes or 

 stipites of the pollinia are flat in the first and filiform in the 

 second. Even if this were to be regarded as a good character, 

 the stipes in the present plant appears to be distinctly flat. 

 Pfitzer, also, in Die NatiirUclte Pjianzenfamilien {vol. ii, i^t. 6, 

 p. 208) maintains Mystacidium, giving the chief distinction 

 as follows : 



Pollinia on a single common stipes . . Angraecum 

 ,, on 2 stipes, quite distinct or 



united only by the glands . Mystacidium 

 This character appears to me of insufiicient weight, and separates 

 species otherwise very closely allied. Hooker in Bot. Mag. tt. 

 7161, 7204, baa described and figured two Angrsecums, the one 

 with two widely separated stipes and glands, the other with the 

 pollinia on two very short stipes and a single gland, — thus 

 attributing no importance to this character. In the genera Disa 

 and Satyrium, the latter of which especially, is very natural and 

 closely defined, while the usual character is two glands, instances 

 occur of species with a single gland, which few botanists would 

 separate on that account. I think therefore upon the whole that 

 Mystacidium cannot be maintained as distinct from Angraecum. 



