TMBB-OTPRIPBDIB-ffl. 



CYPRIPEDIUM. 



Linn. Gen. p. 272, No. 687 (1737). Id. Gen. ed. VI. p. 464, No. 1015 (1764). Lindl. 

 Gen. et. Sp. Orch. p. 525 (1840). Benth. et. Hook. Gen. Plant. III. p. 634 (1883). 



The genera, with their contained species and varieties, hitherto 

 described in this work, follow each other, in the great majority of 

 cases, by gradations so small, or are so closely connected by other 

 genera, necessarily omitted on account of their included species 

 possessing no qualities recommending them to the attention of the 

 cultivator, that the systematic botanist not infrequently experiences 

 considerable difficulty in pointing out the characters by which they 

 may be best distinguished from each other ; and even the tribes 

 and sub - tribes are not always separated by an easily discernible 

 frontier line. Not so, however, with the Ctpeipedie^, for here the 

 transition is so abrupt and so striking that the singular divergence 

 in structure exhibited by the flowers of this tribe from those of all 

 the others, is as perplexing to account for as it is difficult to find 

 limiting characters in many of the genera of the other tribes. 



A comparison of the flower of Cypripedium with that of any 

 genus belonging to another tribe, shows that it differs from it 

 structurally far more than any two flowers of other tribes — even if 

 selected from genera included in different tribes — differ from each 

 other, so that "an enormous amount of extinction must have swept 

 away a multitude of intermediate forms, and left this single genus 

 as a record of a former and more simple state of the great 

 Orchidean Order."* 



Nor does the structure of the flowers furnish the only evidence of 

 the Cypripedes being a more primitive race of orchids than any other 

 existing forms. The geographical distribution of the genus, especially 

 of the two sections of it that form the subject of these pages, reveals 

 some remarkable facts respecting the present history of the included 



* Darwin, Fertilisation of Orchids, p. 271. Aspasia and Neuwiedia, the former with two and 

 the latter with three perfect anthers, and the labelTum in both genera similar to the sepals and 

 petals, were probably either unknown to Darwin or were overlooked by him when writing the 

 passage quoted. The statement in the text is not, however, in the least affected thereby. 



