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The Orchid Review & 
Sv VoL; AAV. JUNE, 1917. No. 294. a 
T is curious what an amount of confusion has been introduced into the 
| histories of some of our oldest or most familiar garden Orchids. It 
was the case with Phalznopsis amabilis, with Anguloa uniflora, and with 
Phaius tuberculosus, to cite three familiar examples, and we now have 
evidence that the remarkable Cypripedium caudatum has not escaped, as 
may be seen by an article on another page. Messrs. Sander have always 
contended that the Peruvian Cypripedium introduced by Forget a few 
years ago was different from the forms familiar in gardens, hence they 
named it C. caudatum Sandere. It has been exhibited on several 
occasions, and now that it has received an Award of Merit from the 
R.H.S. we were induced. to look the matter up further, with results seen in 
the article mentioned. It is now doubtful whether the Peruvian form, 
which was discovered by the Spanish botanists, Ruiz and Pavon, at least 
120 years ago, and described half a century later by Lindley, has previously 
been introduced, for the- plants long cultivated in gardens are shown to 
have come from elsewhere, while errors in the records, as on previous 
occasions, are partly due to confusion with allied species. The only thing 
is to rectify such mistakes when discovered. 
We had recently occasion (pp. 26-28) to review the question of the 
so-called “‘ origin of species by crossing,” and a paper noticed on page 123 
of the present issue invites the query as to how many such “species” may 
arise from a single cross, or at all events from the intercrossing of the same 
pair of original species? In the paper in question are described, and 
figured, three so-called new “species,” derived from the intercrossing of 
Orchis elegans and O. coriophora, of which one earlier form has already 
been described. We are, of course, familiar with the variation of hybrids 
between the same two species, and have arrived at a pretty general agree- 
ment to consider them forms of one ; and that not a species, for they do not 
behave at all like species such as we know them in nature. Even in the 
genus Orchis there is plenty of material for comparison, for a large number 
of natural hybrids have been described where the species grow intermixed. 
t2t 
OUK NOTE BOOK. 
