45 
to me for investigation. I was afterwards presented with more 
material by the superintendent of Tji-Dadap-estate, Mr. W. F. 
Wincxet, and I also collected some more on the finding-spot. 
The little plants are difficult to find because they are so in- 
conspicuous. They grow against the stems, but espacially on 
the thin branches of the tea-bushes that serve for the produc- 
tion of seed. On some trees they were found in hundreds; they 
have not been reported from any other finding-spot, nor could 
I find them myself anywhere else. 
In the adult stage the plants are very frail and very small, 
a robust specimen measuring only a few cM.; the flowers are 
only 1'/, mM, the roots are about 20 mM long, and the inflo- 
_Fescence when they have nearly ceased flowering, about 15 mM. 
Besides the usual roots which, as is well-known, are the only | 
vegetative organs of the Tueniophyllum (the stem is greatly 
reduced), these plants however display other organs connected 
with the roots, and these latter are nothing else but the initial 
stages of plantlife as they occur in many orchids. Gorsen ') has 
already treated of the germination of 7aeniophyllum. From the 
seed is developed a vermiform bright-green little plant, flattened 
on the side that is attached to the branch but tapering to an 
edge on the other side so as to be triangular in section. The 
~-germinal plants are fastened by means of what may be called rhi- 
_ zoids to the substratum. This organs also known in other orchids 
is according to Gozpet a hypocotledon and therefore a stem. 
This hypocotyl grows out straight or somewhat curved along 
the bark of a tree, and at the growing extremity it develops 
a curve, to which Goxsrn gives the name of a germinal coty- 
ledon. Beneath this curve a bud is produced; from this there 
sprouts an inflorescence as soon as the roots have likewise de- . 
veloped from it. Then the hypocotyl is gradually sucked dry 
_ and after a longer or shorter interval the plant appears as the 
usual Taeniophyllum with its long aerial roots and the inflo- 
le oe in bogie eee colleen. the Bos eigen 
