32 ONCIDIUM. 



collection of Mr. Thomas Brocklehurst at Macclesfield^ in February^ 

 1842^ and to wbicli Lindley gave the name of cucullatum, in 

 reference to the hooded anther,* and which he subsequently adopted 

 as the type. Oncidmrn cucullatum was afterwards gathered by 

 Schlim, a Belgian collector, at Las Vetas, in the state of Pamplona 

 on the eastern Cordilleras, at 9,000 — 10,000 feet elevation, and near 

 Ocana at a somewhat less altitude ; by Purdie on the Sierra Nevada 

 of Santa Martha, at 7,500 — 9,000 feet ; by Lehmann on Potare, in 

 the state of Cauca, at 9,000 feet elevation; and by other collectors in 

 various localities, but always at a considerable elevation. 



Some time after its first discovery Jamieson again gathered the 

 original form, the variety nuh'gennm supra, on the western slopes of 

 Pichincha, at 8,000 — 9,000 feet, and Hartweg and William Lobb found 

 it in the same locality in 1842. The merit of first introducing it 

 to British gardens is due to Messrs. Backhouse, of York, who imported 

 it from Ecuador in 1867 — 68, and about the same time it was 

 collected for M. Linden's horticultural establishment at Brussels by 

 Gustav Wallis, in whose consignment first appeared the beautiful 

 variety Phahenopsis, and another named by Reichenbach andigenum. 

 The variety nubigenum has since been detected by Lehmann on the 

 western slopes of Chimborazo, at 8,000 — 10^000 feet elevation. 



It is thence evident that Oncidium cucullatum, in the collective 

 sense here used, is strictly an alpine plant inhabiting the cooler 

 reo-ions of the Andes from the equator northwards to the Caribbean 

 Sea, and growing under conditions which no available horticultural 

 appliances can approach. It has been imported in great quantities 

 durino- the last thirty years, and the many plants that have recently 

 flowered in our houses afford ample evidence of the great variability 

 of the species as regards the colour of its flowers, and in a much 

 less degree, some trifling deviations in structure, but in no case 

 sufficient to justify the splitting up of one of the most distinct 

 types of Oncidium known into a number of so-called species, all of 

 which are connected by intermediate forms. Of the sub -varieties, those 

 enumerated above have been distinguished by a separate name, but 

 there are many others of equal merit that might be distinguished 

 in like manner for horticultural use. 



* This character is not peculiar to this species. 



