ZYGOPETALUM. 



39 



In this very handsome Cyrtopodium we have a remarkable 

 instance of constancy in character over a geographical range which 

 is equalled in extent by that of few other species of orchids, for its 

 limits in tropical America, both northern and southern, almost coin- 

 cide with the limits of epiphytal orchid life on that continent. It 

 was originally discovered in Cuba in the last century by Plumier, 

 through whose specimens it became known to Linnaeus. In the 

 early part of the preseut century it was gathered by Mackenzie in 

 St. Domingo ; by Deppe and Scbiede in Mexico ; in northern Brazil 

 by Martins, and in southern Brazil by Gardner. But long before it 

 was gathered by Gardner it was found by Swainson, the introducer 

 of Oattleya lahiata, who sent it to the Botanic Garden at Glasgow, 

 where it was cultivated many years before it could be induced to 

 flower, a circumstance by no means surprising or unusual under the 

 treatment to which orchids were at that period subjected. At length 

 in 1835 its first panicle of flowers expanded, on which occasion it 

 was figured in the Botanical Magazine, and a little later the species 

 was again figured in Lindley's superb Sertum Orchidaceiim. The 

 latest phase in its history was to some extent a surprise ; this 

 was its discovery in northern Paraguay in 1878 by M. de Saint Leger, 

 and its subsequent importation from that region. Although the 

 Paraguayan plant received separate specific rank from Reichenbach, 

 it conforms strictly to the common type and must bear the same 

 name. 



ZYGOPETALUM. 



Hook, in Bot. Mag. t. 2748 (1827). Rchb. in Walp. Ann. VI. p. 650 (1863). Benth. et 

 Hook. Gen. Plant. III. p. U2 (1883). 



The limits of a genus arc often difficult to define ; the difficulty 

 may arise from various causes, and none more so than the progress 

 of discovery. A species may appear in cultivation that was previously 

 unknown to science, and the botanist who deals with it, finding 

 characters in the flowers structurally dift'erent from every known 

 genus, creates a new one for its reception. Another species may 

 afterwards come to light having some structural analogy to the 

 former, but at the same time differing from it in some apparently 

 essential character that forbids its being referred to the genus 

 founded upon the former species, or to any other, and in consequence 



