MASDEVALLIA. 67 



M. Troglodytes. 



Leaves linear-lanceolate, 4 — 5 inches long, with recurved tridentate 

 tips. Scapes shorter than the leaves, with a small appressed bract at 

 each joint, decumbent, one-flowered. Flowers campanulate, reddish 

 brown on the inside, white with a few bruwn spots externally ; free 

 portion of sepals very short, sub-rotund, prolonged into filiform, 

 divergent, red-brown tails 1| inches long; petals ligulate, reddish 

 brown bordered with white ; lip with hyijochile (claw) short, channelled, 

 the epichile (sac) sub-orbicidar, concave with one keel inside, white. 

 Masdevallia Troglodytes,* Morren in Belg. Hort. 1877, p. 97. 



Introduced into European gardens by M. Lalinde, a resident of 

 Medellin, in New Granada; it flovrered for tha first time in the 

 collection of M, Oscar- Lamarclie, at Liege, in Belgium, in 1876. 

 Although the flowers are small and inattractive as regards colour, 

 the great profusion in which they are produced secures for the 

 plant a place in many collections. The specific name, T[)(i)yXoSvTt]c, 

 "dweller in caves/' is a purely fanciful one, like Ghimcera, nycterina 

 and others. 



In Masdevallia Troglodijtes, M. Houtteana. and M. Garden (to 

 which others may probably be hereafter added) we have a series of 

 closely-allied forms, which, seen singly, might be mistaken the one for 

 the other. The chief botanical distinction between them consists in the 

 structure of their curious labellum, thus — in 31. Garden the hypochile 

 is comparatively broad with the cleft open, and the epichile is narrowly 

 reniform with the concave surface smooth ; in M. Hoidteana the epichile 

 is sub-quadrate and has three equidistant raised lines in the hollow ; 

 in M. Troglodytes the two divisions of the lip are smaller, and the 

 epichile has but one raised line in its cavity. Moreover, in M. Garderi 

 the sinus between the sepals is very shallow ; in M. Troglodytes a 

 little deeper ; in M. Houtteana it is angular ; the tails of the three 

 species are differently coloured, as are the spots on their perianth 

 tubes. The sedge-like foliage of M. Houtteana is peculiar to that species. 



M. Veitchiana. 



Leaves linear-oblong or linear-oblanceolate, 6 — 8 inches long, sub-acute. 

 Scapes 12 — 18 inches long with two or more appressed, elongate, 

 sheathing bracts, one- rarely two-flowered. Flowers among the largest 

 and most showy in the genus, 2 — 3 inches across vertically, exclusive 

 of the sepaline tails ; perianth tube campanulate ; free portion of sepals 



* Reichenbach in Gard. Chron. XXIV. (1885), p. 489, sub. Masdevallia senilis, states that 

 M. Troglodytes, Morr. ~ M. Benedicti, Echb., but a comparison of the figure in the ^e^^/r/wc 

 Eorticole quoted above with that of M. Benedicti in Xen. Orch. II. t. 186, does not confirm 

 this. The M. Houtteana and the M. Benedicti in cultivation are unquestionably one and the 

 same species, 



