50 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
They are then removed to a Cattleya house for the rest of the year, and kept 
near the glass, being sparingly watered from the time the growth is made 
up. This treatment is suitable for all the members of the Catasetum group. 
Mr. Wills must be congratulated on his success with this striking plant, as 
in so many cases they paar deteriorate and die—evidently the result of 
improper treatment. 
The photograph was taken on the plant, which was simply propped in 
such a way as to bring the drooping raceme parallel with the camera front, 
the rest of the plant being-omitted>- The figure shrews thetoothed lip, and 
in one or two flowers the curiously-twisted column, both these organs being 
twisted to one side, and giving to the flower its contorted appearance. It 
also shows the right and left handed twist of the flowers on the two sides of 
the spike, which is another feature of this remarkable genus. 
Mormodes luxatum was originally described by Dr. Lindley, in 1842, 
from a specimen which flowered in the collection. of G. Barker, Esq., of 
Birmingham (Bot. Reg., XXVIII., Misc., p. 60). It had been sent home 
from Mexico by his collector, Ross, who, when in the neighbourhood of 
Valladolid, had some masses brought to him reported to be a plant of grea 
beauty. A year later it was figured in the same work (XXIX., t. 33). I 
was described as having pale lemon-yellow, fleshy, rather globular flowers, 
of nearly three inches in diameter, which were deliciously fragrant, but so 
distorted by the dislocation of parts that it would be difficult to ascer- 
tain their real nature were it not for the lip; a remark not altogether 
unwarranted, as our figure shows. Indeed, the generic name is taken from 
mormo, a goblin, in allusion to the strange appearance of the flowers. 
For many years it remained very rare, for in 1878 Reichenbach, in 
recording a majestic peduncle, nearly three feet long, with twenty-five 
flowers, in the collection of Sir Trevor Lawrence, Bart., at Burford, 
Dorking, remarked that he had only once before seen it alive, when it 
flowered with Messrs. Backhouse, of York (Gard. Chron., 1878, x. p- 396). 
Sir Trevor Lawrence spoke of it as “really a grand plant—stately 1 in flower 
and foliage, delicate in its pure ivory tint and in its scent, and quaint in its 
twisted bell-shaped lip. To my mind it area age many varied beauties, 
enough of them to captivate all tastes.”. It appears to have been the 
variety eburneum, Rchb. f., which was figured in 1882 from the collection 
of Dr. Paterson, of the Bridge of Allan (Gard. Chron., 1882, XVIII., 
Pp- 144, 145, fig. 27). This variety also flowered at Kew in 1885, and a 
note (Gard. Chron, 1884, XXIV., p. 176), speaks of it as the female of a 
Catasetum belonging to the section Monachanthus, a remark obviously 
reproduced from Bentham (Gen. Plant., III, Pp. 552), but which is 
altogether erroneous, for the plant has the characteristic twisted column 
and lip of Mormodes, with which it agrees in every other respect. 
