534 



ORCHID-GEOWER S MANUAL. 



NANODES, Lindley. 

 (TriJe Epidendreae, subtribe Laelieae.) 

 A very small epiphytal genus of peculiar interest, with a ringent 

 perianth, and a fleshy undivided lip connate with the column. Bentham 

 associates it with U^idendrum under the section Nanae, distinguished 

 like it by distichous sheathing leaves on a dwarf diffuse-growing stem. 

 N. Medusae is a most extraordinary-looking object when in flower, very 

 distinct from any other of its order. 



Culture. — The little Orcliid described below is a plant well worth 



cultivating, and requires to be grown on a block, or in a basket, with 



moss and peat, and kept very cool in the Odontocjlossum house, ,where it 



should be suspended from the roof, as it is a native of the higher Andes 



of Western S. America. 



N. MEDUSAE, Bclih. /.— 

 One of the most singulai* of 

 Orchids. The stems are 

 densely tufted, pendent, 

 branched, covered with broad 

 imbricated sheaths of the 

 distichous glaucous green 

 leaves, which are 3 to 4 inches 

 long, linear-oblong, curved, 

 unequally bilobed at the apex, 

 and semi-amplexicaul at the 

 base ; the flowers are leathery, 

 2| inches across, flat, two or 

 more in the axils of the 

 terminal leaves ; the sepals 

 and petals linear-oblong, yel- 

 lowish-green tinged with 

 brown, and the lip very large, 

 orbicular with a cordate base, 

 and a bilobed apex, of a deep 

 maroon-purple, greenish over 

 the disk, the whole margin 

 deeply cut into subulate 

 segments, forming a conspic- 

 uous fringe ; the plant has no 

 pseudobulbs to support it, but 

 only a woody stem crowded 

 with greyish-green leaves in 

 two ranks whose sheathing bracts entirely hide the stem itself. Of this 

 plant Sir Joseph Hooker remarks, that, "altogether the flattened stout 



KANODES MEDUSAE. 



(From the Gardeners' Chronicle.') 



