Marcu, 1918.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 5! 
AY, 
a 
UISIA is a small genus with the habit of Vanda teres, but rather small 
flowers, and several species are very imperfectly known, though a few 
\ 
THE GENUS LUISIA. bx 
we, 
others are often seen in botanical collections. Lindley remarked of his 
Be pail “The flowers look like little birds with narrow outspread 
wings.” And Reichenbach, when describing L. Psyche, observed: ‘‘ There 
are some Orchids so very bizarre that if we had not seen them alive or dried, 
but only in Oriental drawings, we could but believe them to be imaginary. 
i Our species has green flowers with very large petals, comparable 
to the spread ears of a rabbit, and a very singular large roundish green lip, 
full of blackish violet-purple spots, reminding one of a Persian or Turkish 
carpet.’ This character is well shown at t. 5558 of the Botanical Magazine, 
where the species is figured. And of L. Cantharis the writer remarked : 
‘“‘ The lip is clasped on either side by the almost conduplicate lateral sepals, 
and resembles a beetle of the genus Cantharis, with corrugated dull purple 
elytra. . . . . The top of the lip is appressed to the stem, as in L. 
volucris, and the petals are deflexed on either side, as if to direct an insect 
to the pollinia.”’ 
The genus was originally established by Gaudichaud, in 1826 (Freyc. 
Voy., p. 426, t. 37), being based on materials collected in the Marianne 
Islands. The species has since been greatly confused. Some seven years 
later, Lindley (Gen. & Sp. Orch., p. 167) made it synonymous with 
Cymbidium triste, Willd. (Epidendrum triste, Forst.), a native of New 
Caledonia, to which he also added the Japanese Epidendrum teres, Thumb., 
and the North Indian Vanda trichorhiza, Hook., forming for it and C. 
tenuifolium, Willd., a new section of Cymbidium, called Pseudo-Vanda. 
Blume, who afterwards wrote on the genus, separated the Japanese and 
Indian plants, but others have been subsequently added, and in the Flora 
of British India, L. teretifolia is regarded as a polymorphic and widely diffused 
species, extending from Sikkim and Ceylon through the Malay Islands 
as far as New Caledonia. This view is doubtfully correct, for a drawing of 
the New Caledonian plant, by Forster, shows quite distinct petals, though 
the point cannot be confirmed, because of the absence of flowers from 
Forster’s original specimen, which is preserved at Kew. There is also 
evidence that the material subsequently added to L. teretfolia contains 
more than a single species, for three different plants which have been more or 
less confused have recently flowered at Kew, though their identity has not 
been fully cleared up owing to the imperfect nature of some of the original 
specimens. 
The confusion also involves Lindley’s genus, Mesoclastes (Gen. & Sp. 
