OENITHOCEPHALUS. 



133 



all the species of lonopsis.* It is widely dispersed over Central 

 America from Oaxaca southwards, the West Indian Islands, and the 

 adjacent littoral of Venezuela. It was first introduced into British 

 gardens by Sir Ealph Woodford, who sent it from Trinidad with 

 Oncidium Papilio and other orchids to the Horticultural Society of 

 London, in whose garden at Chiswick it flowered in May, 1824. 

 We next read of its being cultivated by Sir Charles Lemon at 

 Carclew in 1836; his plant had been brought from Cuba, and was 

 figured and described in the Botanical Register under the name of 

 lonopsis tenera,\ The species is a variable one, but the deviations 

 from the type do not appear to be sufiiciently distinct to require 

 separate notice.^ 



ORNITHOCEPHALUS. 



Hook. Exot. Fl. t. 127 (1825). Benth. et Hook. Gen. Plant. III. p. 668 (1883). 

 A very remarkable genus, of which the most essential character 

 is the long slender rostellum, to which the equally long caudicle 

 or stalk of the pollen masses is attached by means of its terminal 

 glandular disc, the latter organ lying so closely appressed to the 

 elongated rostellum that the two appear to be but one body. This 

 extraordinary structure is shown in the accompanying woodcut of 

 Ornithocephalus grandiflorus, figs. 3, 4, and 5, the largest flowered 

 species in the genus, and that in which this curious apparatus can 

 be best seen. About twenty species are known to science, scattered 

 over tropical America from Mexico to southern Brazil, but all of 

 them with the exception of 0. grandiflorus are diminutive and in- 

 conspicuous plants of far greater interest to the botanist than to 

 the horticulturist. Of these species three or four have found their 

 way into British gardens from time to time. 0. ciliatus is mentioned 

 by Sir Joseph Paxton|| as being in cultivation in 1844, "but in no 



* It is highly probable tliat Humbohlt's Iono2}sis pulchella and Liudley's T. utricular to ides 

 are one and the same s])ecies. 



t There seems to us to be no doubt that this is only a geographical form of Iono2)sis 

 utricularioides, and we have therefore unhesitatingly referred it to that species. 



t Lindley has noted five such deviations with the remark that they do not appear to 

 possess any clear marks of distinction ; they are evidently geographical forms. 



II Mag. Bot. XI. p. 70. 



