EPIDENDRUM, 81 



EPIDENDRUM. 



Linn. Gen. p. 272. No. 68S (1737). Id. ed. VI. p. 464, No. 1016 (1764). Lindl. Fol. Orch. 

 (1853). Benth. et Hook. Gen. Plant. III. p. 529 (1883). 



The " father of modern botany/^ Linngeus^ referred all the tropical 

 epiphytal orchids which he knew and which were about thirty in all, 

 to Epidendrum ; but these consisted of species that had been brought 

 from India and Africa as well as from South America and Mexico, 

 and therefore included forms that differed widely from each other. 

 This simple classification soon failed to meet the requirements of 

 science, so that even before the eighteenth century closed, his country- 

 man, Oloff Swartz, began to lay the foundation of a more scientific 

 classification of the tropical Orchideae by separating from Epidendium 

 cochleatum, E. ciliare and E. noctiirnnm, which he retained under 

 Epidendrum, the most divergent of the other Linnaean species, and 

 founding new genera upon them ; and as additions were constantly 

 being made to the Orchideee by the discovery of new species, the 

 process was continued by succeeding botanists, notably by our own 

 distinguished countrymen Dr. Robert Brown and Dr. John Lindley, 

 especially the last named, during whose life-long labours a large 

 number of new genera were established, and most of the older ones 

 became tolerably well circumscribed, including the Linnaean Epidendrum, 

 but which even in Lindley's time had become the most extensive genus 

 in the Order. As elaborated in the Folia Orchidacea published in 

 1853, Epidendrum then included over three hundred species, but 

 since that time numerous additions have been made, so that upwards 

 of four hundred species good and bad are now known to science. 

 A genus so extensive and varied must necessarily present much that 

 is perplexing both to the scientist and to the horticulturist; hence 

 to meet the exigences of a progressive science like botany it is not 

 surprising that an occasional revision should be called for, whence it 

 happens that species previously included have to be removed, and others 

 formerly regarded as generically distinct have to be added. Some 

 such changes have been found necessary in the case of Epidendrum,* 

 and have therefore resulted in corresponding changes in nomenclature. 

 As instances of separation we may cite E. hicornutum (Hook.) and its 

 near ally and perhaps variety E. higihherosum (Rchb.) The first named 



* This genus has been twice revised since the publication of Lindley's Folia Orchidacea 

 in 1853, first by Keichenbach, in Walper's Annalcs Botaniccs, 1861 — 5, and secondly by 

 Bentham, in the Genera Plantarum, 1883. We have followed the last-named revision. 



G 



