98 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [APRIL, 1909. 
able time, and [ think he must have arrived at the conclusion that the 
pendulous habit was ‘‘ recessive ’’—that seems to be the word—until the 
flower appeared, when it suddenly became ‘‘ dominant,” for the bud showed 
a tendency to hang down, and had to be tied up to a stick. Perhaps by this 
time the pendulous “ unit-character’’ was beginning to assert itself. But I 
must not drift into Mendelism, so I will only wonder what will happen 
when we get a batch of self-fertilised seedlings from it. 
We are subject to periodical outbreaks of ‘‘ nomenclature,” and here is 
the latest :—‘‘ Neither the Vienna Congress nor any other congregation of 
botanists will ever convince practical people that a very large number of the 
botanical names given to plants are not absurd. . . . All efforts to 
make the name describe or tell the origin or the distribution of a plant are 
not only futile, but the result is often misleading.” It is nothing new, but 
these botanists are terrible fellows. They have often been told, but they 
won’t mend their ways. They still go on trying to make the name describe 
the plant. Only the other day one of them called a plant Cymbidium 
erythrostylum, because it had a red column, and not long before that he 
called another Cymbidium rhodochilum, because it had a red lip. He once 
called an Orchid Coryanthes Jeucocorys, because it was the only known 
species in the genus which had the helmet of the flower white. They have 
always been doing this sort of thing. We have Broughtonia sanguinea and 
Vanda coerulea, Epidendrum umbellatum and Dendrobium luteolum, and 
lots of others, but then these are old names, and were given before it had 
been pointed out how futile and misleading it all is, so excuses can be made 
in these cases. 
But this is an interruption, and we are keeping the argument waiting. 
Let us proceed :—‘‘ The ugliest thing that has been done lately has been 
the institution of the jumble name for multi-generic hybrid Orchids. Thus 
we have Brassocattleya, Brassocatllia ’—and, it might have been added, 
Epicattleya, Epilelia, Epiphronitis, Sophrocattleya, Lzliocattleya, 
Odontioda, and Zygocolax. ‘“ Surely this is ridiculous. It never shoul 
have been started. When two so-called genera interbreed that is a proof 
of their congeneric relationship, and one name should go, at any rate so fat 
as the hybrid is concerned, which shculd be named after its mother, the 
father being often conjectural. Is it too late to set this matter right ?” 
Of course not, it’s never too late to mend, so let us consider the mattet 
further. Epiphronitis x Veitchii ought to have been called Sophronitis, 
because Sophronitis grandiflora was the mother, though the plant is, both 
in habit and structure, like Epidendrum, but then that does not count 
Similarly, Epicattleya x matutina is a Cattleya, and Epilelia x Charles- 
