OXCIDIUM. 



31 



SUb-vars. (distinguished by colour only). — andigenum (Gard. Chron. 1869, 

 p. 416), sepals and petals pale yellow, dotted with purple, lip white 

 heavily blotched with purple; Daijanum (Gard. Chron. 1872, p. 539), 

 name only ; oUvaceum, sepals and petals deep olive-brown, lip light rose- 

 purple spotted with deep purple ; spatliulatum (Fol. Orch. Oncid. No. 

 69 C), racemes nodding, many flowered, sepals and petals spotted with 

 purple, lip spotted only at the base. 

 The botanical history of this beautiful Oncid is made up of a 

 number of fragmentary notes dispersed in a very irregular manner 

 throughout the horticultural and botanical literature of the last sixty 

 years, these fragineuts being in most cases of a very meagre 

 description, and not infrequently contradictory. It is scarcely 

 possible to make a connected narrative out of them, and the best 

 that can be done is to bring them together into a kind of 

 chronoloofical order. 



Oncidium cueullatum, var. Phalienopsis. 



The species first became known to science through Dr. Jamieson, a 

 Scotch botanist, who obtained a professorship in the university of Quito 

 a few years after the Spanish South American colonies had estab- 

 lished their independence. In 1831 — 2 Dr. Jamieson sent dried 

 flowers to Sir W. J. Hooker, which he had gathered from plants 

 growing on the decaying trunks of trees at 11,000 — 13,000 feet 

 elevation on Asuay, one of the higher eminences of the Ecuadorian 

 Andes, and from these Dr. Lindley described the species in his 

 Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants under the fanciful name of 

 nubigenum, or " cloudborn," in allusion to the altitude at which the 

 plant was found. Ten years later Linden discovered an Oncidium 

 in the forests of Quindiu, on the central Cordillera of New Grrauada, 

 and sent living plants to Europe, one of which flowered in the 



