^8 MASDEVALLIA. 



M. cucullata. 



Leaves obloug-lancet)lato, 9 — 12 inches long, very leathery. Scapes 

 as long as the leaves, Avith a sheathing l)ract near the base, and a 

 larger one embracing the ovary and base of sepaline tube. Tube 

 sub-cyHndric, with a double gibbosity below ; free portion of sepals 

 triangular, keeled, deep maroon-purple ; tails U inches long, yellowish 

 green ; petals white, oblong, contracted at the tip where there is a blackish 

 purple wart ; lip tongue-shaped, deep purple. 



Masdevallia cucullata, Liudl. Orcli. LiiuL p. 4 (184G). Rchb. in Gard. Chron. 

 XIX. (1883), p. 592. 



Discovered by Linden, in tlie forests of Fusagassuga, near Bogota, 

 in New Granada, in 1842, and afterwards gathered by Wallis, 

 Roezl, and others, but not introduced till 1883, when the first 

 plants that reached Europe alive were collected by Carder, for the firm 

 of Messrs. ShuttleAVorth and Co., in the locality in which the species 

 had been discovered by Linden forty years previously. Masdevallia 

 cucullata is known in its native country by the name of La Viuda, 

 'Hhe widow,'^* which it probably obtained on account of its sombre- 

 coloured flowers that are hooded by a conspicuous bract, the latter 

 character also suggesting the scientific name. 



M. Davisii. 



Leaves 6 — 8 inches long, narrowly oblanceolate, thick and leathery. 

 Scapes slender, longer than the leaves, one-flowered. Flowers 

 IJ — 2 inches broad across the lateral sepals, yellow Avith some orange 

 markings at the base externally ; perianth tube sub-cylindric, with a 

 prominent keel above and gibbous beneath at the base ; free portion 

 of upper sepal ovate-triangular, ascending, gradually contracted into a 

 slender tail an inch long ; lateral sepals oblong, connate to more than 

 half their length, contracted at the a})ex into slender cusps ; petals 

 and lip very small and concealed within the tube, the former oblong, 

 notched at the top, auricled at the base, white, the latter clawed, 

 linear-oblong, brownish. Column semi terete, toothed at apex. 



Masdevallia Davisii, Rchb, ia Gard. Uliron. IL (1874), p. 710. Id. V. (1876\, 



p. 366. Xcn. Orch. III. p. 3. t. 203. Bot. Mag. t. 6190. Williams' Orch. Alb. II. 



t. 76. 



Discovered in 1873 by our collector, Davis, on the eastern Cor- 

 dillera of Pern, at no great disfa^rce from the historic city of Cuzco. 

 It occurs on the slopes of the mountains at an immense elevation, 

 probably not less than 10,500 — 12,000 feet, growing in loam and 

 moss, and also in decaying vegetable matter collected in the crevices 



* Roezl affirms that this name is applied to Masdevallia macrura by all the children 

 in the neighbourhood of Souson. Godefroy's Orchidophile, 1883, p. 643. 



