MORMODES. 135 



This remarkable Mormodes was first communicated to Dr. Lindley 

 by Mr. Wilmore^ of Oldford^ near Birmingham^ in 1840, without, it 

 appears, giving any indication of its origin. We next read of its 

 being imported by Messrs. Loddiges from La Guayra, the port of 

 Caracas, and according to Eeichenbach it was afterwards gathered 

 by SchUm, Wagener and Warscewicz in north-west Venezuela. It 

 is occasionally imported from that region, and it is one of the 

 species of Mormodes most frequently seen in British collections. 



The specific name Buccinator, '' a trumpeter," refers to the curious 

 trumpet-like labellum. 



M. Cartonii. 



Pseudo-bulbs 5 — 7 inches long. Leaves 12 — 15 inches long. Scapes 



half as long as the leaves, densely racemed above the middle. Flowers 



with a faintly pleasant fragrance, 1| inch across, yellow sometimes 



striped and spotted with red ; sepals and petals neaily uniform, 



lanceolate, acute, spreading ; lip irregularly oblong, obliquely twisted 



into half a circle, the acute apex meeting the awl-shaped point of the 



anther, the column being similarly twisted and bent. 



Mormodes Cartonii, Hook, in Bot. Mag. t. 4214 (1846). Lindl. in Paxt. Fl. 

 Card. III. sub. t. 93 (1857). Gard. Chron. 1871, p. 447, witli fig. 



Discovered by Purdie, in 1842, on the Sierra Nevada of Santa 



Martha in northern Colombia, and sent by him to the Royal Gardens 



at Kew. It flowered for the first time in this country in 1845, in 



Syon House Gardens, and is named after Mr. Carton, at that time 



gardener to the Duke of Northumberland. It is closely allied to the 



preceding species, from which it is chiefly distinguished by its longer 



and more slender pseudo-bulbs and leaves, its denser racemes of 



smaller and differently coloured flowers, and especially by its 



narrower and more acute hp and awl-shaped appendage of the 



anther.* 



M. Colossus. 



"Pseudo-bulbs 6 — 12 inches long. Leaves elliptic-ovate, acute, 

 plaited. Scape 2 — 2)^ feet long, racemose along the distal half ; 



* It is also very near Mormodes igneum, a native of the same region, introduced by 

 Warscewicz and figured in Paxton's tlowcr Garden, a species we have not seen. Of these 

 three plants {M. Burxinator, M. Cartonii, and M. igneum) Dr. Lindley remarked that it 

 is not improbable that they are one and the same species, for beyond colour there is not 

 much to distinguish them, and it is no doubt that species which travellers report to 

 have seen growing iu the temperate parts of the snow-capped mountain ridges of Santa 

 Martha, especially on the branches of an Erythrina (Paxt. Fl. Gard. loc. cit.). This is 

 doubtless true as regards M. Buccinator and M. igneum, but M. Cartonii is certainly 

 distinct from the first-named species. 



