26 ANSELLIA. 



For the discovery of this beautiful orchid both science aud horti- 

 culture are indebted to the energetic Indian explorer William 

 Griffith^ who met mth it on the Khasia Hills about the same 

 time as Vanda ccernlea, 1836 — 37. It also occurs in Sikkim and 

 Manipur, its vertical range being 4^000 — 6,000 feet ; it usually 

 affixes itself to the stems and branches of trees, often 20 — 30 feet 

 from the ground, growing under the same climatic conditions as 

 those stated under Cymhidium giganteum . It was imported by Messrs. 

 Loddiges in 1841, but it did not flower till December, 1844; it 

 continued to be a rare plant in British gardens for some years 

 afterwards, till collected by Simons in Assam in 1856 — 57. It was 

 named by Mr. Griffith after Mr. Masters, one of the principal 

 superintendents of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, during the Director- 

 ship of Dr. WaUich. 



ANSELLIA. 



Lindl. in Bot. Reg. 1844, sub. t. 12. Benth. et Hook. Gen. Plant. III. p. 537. 

 Among those who accompanied the ill-fated Niger expedition of 

 1841 — 42 was Mr. Ansell, a gardener, who, when at Fernando Po, 

 found in Clarence Cove, growing on the stem of an oil palm {Elms 

 guineensis) an epiphyte of which a dried specimen came into the 

 possession of Dr. Lindley. On this specimen he founded the genus 

 Ansellia in commemoration of the discoverer. 



Two years later living specimens, whose origin is not stated but un- 

 doubtedly west African, which had been received by the Rev. John Clowes 

 and Messrs. Loddiges, flowered for the first time and one of Loddiges' 

 plants was figured in the Botanical Register of 1846, t. 30, under the 

 name of Ansellia africana. But on comparing this figure with the 

 Fernando Po type specimen preserved in Lindley's herbarium at Kew, 

 it is evident that it does not represent the original A. africana, but 

 another form for which Mr. N. E. Brown has proposed the name of 

 A. confusa. It is this form that is best known in gardens as A. africana. 

 Quite recently a plant collected by the Earl of Scarborough on the 

 banks of the Haka river. Elephant Forest, near Lake Chad, and sent 

 to Kew for identification, proves to be this A. confusa. 



In the meantime an Ansellia had been received liy the late Mr. 

 Wilson Saunders from jSTatal, and wliicli had been discovered by the 

 German traveller Gueinzuis, but not introduced by him. This is the same 

 as that described by Reichenbach in Walper's Annales Botanices under the 



