[Plate 12.] 



THE LONG-TAILED LADY'S-SLIPPER 



(CYPEIPEDIUM CAUDATUM.) 



A Stove Herbaceous Plant, from Peru, belonging to the Natural Order of Orchids. 



Specific Character. 



THE LONG-TAILED LADY'S-SLIPPER. — Stemless. Leaves distichous, sword-shaped, leathery, smooth, spotless. 

 Scape erect, bearing several flowers, longer than the leaves. Bracts like spathes, as long as the ovary. Sepals 

 ovate-lanceolate, gracefully curved. Petals extended into very long pendent wavy linear tails. Lip oblong, 

 glandular on the edge, near the base. Sterile stamen broader than long, two-lobed, with bristles on the ends of 

 its lobes. 



Cypripedium caudatum : Lindley, Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants, p. 531. 



rnillS extraordinary plant was for many years known only by a few fragments preserved 

 -L in herbaria. At last the collector Hartweg met with it in wet, marshy places near 

 the hamlet of Nanegal, in the province of Quito ; but he did not send it home. Subse- 

 quently the collectors of Messrs. Veitch of Exeter, and of Mr. Linden, fell in with it; 

 and to the latter is, we believe, owing its introduction to Europe in a living state. 



For the opportunity of figuring it we have to acknowledge our obligations to Mrs. 

 Lawrence, who first succeeded in bringing it into flower, and who exhibited it to the 

 Horticultural Society. 



The accompanying plate is a faithful representation of the plant as it flowered at 

 Ealing Park, but is far from giving an adequate idea of the natural beauty of the species. 

 The great sheathing bracts, which in South America are as large as those of a Heliconia, 

 were mere abortions ; and we learn from drawings brought home by Mr. Warczewitz that 

 the flowers are very much larger and finer-coloured in its native swamps. The stains on 

 the lip, for instance, are numerous, and of a rich warm brown, giving quite another ap- 

 pearance to the flowers. On one of Hartweg's dried specimens are remains of six flowers 

 of this sort, placed at the end of a scape more than two feet high. 



The petals are the extraordinary part of the species. In most LadyVslipper flowers 

 they are short, and little distinguishable from the sepals ; bat here they extend into the 

 most curious narrow tails, which hang down and wave in the wind, in a manner of which 

 we have in gardens no other such example, not even in the genus of Strophantus. What 

 adds to the curiosity of these singular appendages is the fact, first remarked by Mrs. 

 Lawrence, that they are quite short when the flower begins to open, and that they acquire 



