MESOSPINIDIUM. 405 



flowers on one-flowered fascicled scapes, the sepals and petals 

 being unspotted white, and the lip orange, margined with 

 rose. — Peru. 

 Fig.— Pcepp. ei End!., Nov. Gen. et Sp., i. t, 66. 



M. Turneri, Hort. — A very distinct and pretty species, with 

 short pseudobulbs, long broad leaves a foot high of a very dark 

 green colour, and flowers of a rich cinnamon-brown and 

 crimson, with a delicious fragrance ; it blooms in May in 

 great profusion, and continues a long time in perfection. — 

 South America. 



M, venusta, Linden et Rchh. f. — This plant is one of the 

 best of the genus, of easy culture, blooming at different times 

 in the year, and continuing for three or four weeks in perfec- 

 tion. It has bluntly oblong compressed pseudobulbs, bearing 

 at the top a pair of broad oblong-lanceolate leaves, nearly a 

 foot high, and producing from their base the one-flowered 

 red bracteate scapes, which are much shorter than the leaves, 

 and bear a large showy somewhat nodding white flower, with 

 the front lobe of the lip yellow, the edges of the lateral lobes 

 crimson, and two crimson spots on the disk, where also is a 

 great roundish tomentose callus ; the sepals and petals are all 

 spreading and attenuately acuminate at the apex, the sepals 

 being nearly or quite three inches long. There are two 

 varieties of this species, one having the flowers superior in 

 being larger and more pure in colour than the other. — Neiv 

 Grenada : Ocana. 



FlG.—Bot. Mag., t, 5296 ; Batem. 2nd Cent. Orch. PL, t. 118 ; Pescatorea, 

 t. 38. 



MeSOSPIHIDIUM, Reichenhach Jil. 



(Tribe Vandese, subtribe Oncidiese.) 



A small group of cool house Orchids, closely allied to 

 Odontoglosswn, with which Bentham unites them. Reichen- 

 hach attributes to it a somewhat fleshy partially expanded 

 perianth, connate lateral sepals subsaccate at the base forming a 

 very short chin, a pair of lamellae at the base of the lip, and 

 a semiterete column deeply excavated in front, the anther bed 

 with a descending border and a bicuspidate rostellum. The 



