MILTONIA. 113 



known in a tangible form through a dried flower brought to a 

 British horticultural firm under circumstances amusingly related by 

 Reichenbach in his first announcement of the species^* but which 

 was not followed by its immediate introduction. In the meantime 

 it had been re-discovered by Wallis while collecting plants in New 

 Granada for M. Linden^ but he too failed to introduce it into 

 European gardens. Disappointment also attended Roezl^ who was 

 commissioned in 1871 by M. Linden to collect it in the locahty in 

 which it had been found by Wallis, but from the delay and diffi- 

 culty of transmission the plants were all dead when they reached 

 Belgium. Enough, however, had by that time transpired to excite 

 a most lively interest in the plant, and an ardent desire to see it 

 blooming in the plant houses of Europe. With the slenderest scrap 

 of information then available, Chesterton, early in the year 1872, 

 undertook at our request to endeavour to seek it out and to bring 

 a consignment home. Tliat he succeeded in bringing it to England, 

 and its flowering for the first time in our houses in the spring of 

 1873, are well-known facts in its history. The interest awakened by 

 its actual presence in our midst and the general admiration accorded 

 to it soon caused it to become a favourite with amateurs of 

 orchids. 



The veil of mystery that so long shrouded this lovely plant during 

 its early history has since been torn away, and we are now in pos- 

 session of ample details respecting its habitat and the conditions 

 under which it grows in its native home. For this valuable in- 

 formation, science and horticulture are in a great measure indebted 

 to one of the ablest observers of orchid life in the Andean region 

 who has ever hved and travelled in it, Herr F. C. Lehmann, the 

 German Consul in that country, from whose communication to the 

 Berlin Gartenflora] we extract the following details : — 



The southorn limit of Miltonia vexiUaria in on the western slopes of 

 the snow-capped " Huarnii-Urcu," and the volcano of Coatacachi, in the 

 provinces of Esmeralda and Imbabura, in northern Ecuador ; here and on 

 the western sloj)es of the volcanic peaks of Chiles, Cumbal, and 

 Mallania, in soutliern Colombia, occur the varieties LeJimanni, albicans, 

 and Measnresiana (alba supra). The species thence spreads northwards 

 along till' central mountain region and the western slopes of the West 



* Card. Chron. 1867, p. 901. 

 t Jahrgang 38 (1889), p. 350. 



