MASDEVALLIAS 505 
MASDEVALLIAS 
Natural Order ORCHIDE%. Genus Jlasdevallia 
MASDEVALLIA (named in honour of Dr. Masdevall, a Spanish botanist). 
A genus of about one hundred and fifty species, mostly small, growing 
in moss on the trunks of trees, or in crevices of the rocks, in the cool 
mountain forests of Tropical America, chiefly from Peru to Mexico, and 
at elevations between 6000 and 9000 feet. They have creeping root- 
stocks with spoon-shaped or strap-shaped leathery leaves, and large or 
medium-sized flowers of singular form, borne singly or several together 
on a tall slender scape. The sepals are united to form a tube, except at 
their upper ends, which are prolonged into slender tails, in some species 
of great length. The petals are small and hidden in the sepal-tube, the 
labellum hinged to the half-rounded column. 
The growing of Masdevallias in this country is a thing 
of yesterday and to-day. Botanists were acquainted with 
herbarium specimens of a number of species long before a living plant 
was brought to Britain. This was due to the difficulty of transporting 
them to the coast without destroying them. Growing in a moderate 
temperature at so great an altitude, their long journey down would 
subject them to an increasingly higher temperature, so that the bulk of 
a consignment would be worthless before it reached this country. It 
was therefore necessary that some amount of cultivation and propagation 
should be practised here before many plants could be obtained. But, 
only quite recently, the demand was even smaller than the supply, because 
those first introduced were by no means the most attractive members of 
the genus. Among these were: J/. infracta, introduced from Brazil, 
1835; M. triangularis, from Columbia, 1842; and A. floribunda, from 
Mexico, 1843; MW. tovarensis came from Venezuela, 1865; M. veitchiana, 
from Peru, in 1867; J. ignea, from Columbia, in 1871: and the principal 
species now cultivated have been introduced since that date. MM. muscosa 
is so Sensitive that upon a fly or other insect, however small, alighting 
upon the labellum or column, the labellum shuts up over the column and 
compels the insect to pass first over the stigmas and be made sticky on 
its lower surface, then over the pollinia, when pollen-grains adhere to it. 
On the fly visiting another flower, these are detached by the stigma, and 
so effect cross-fertilisation. 
In the following descriptions only the flowers are 
described, except where the leaves appear to depart suffici- 
History. 
Principal Species, 
1V.—3 
