NEW AND RARE PLANTS. 
91 
of Myanthus cristatus changing- into a Monachanthus, related to Monachanthus 
mridis, and combining- in its own proper person no fewer than three supposed 
genera, Myanthus, Monachanthus, and Catasetum. 
I doubt very much whether any one would have believed in the possibility of 
such transmutations upon weaker evidence than that I am about to produce. At 
least, for my own part I am much in the position of the person who, upon being- 
assured of the truth of an improbable story, exclaimed, " Why, sir, I would not 
believe it if I saw it myself." I am the first botanist who ever witnessed any of 
these changes ; my observation was put upon record several years ago, and yet, when 
I read it again in 1833, I really believed I must have been mistaken. In this very 
Botanical Register, Vol. XII. page 966, in April 1828 ? is the following note under 
Catasetum cristatum. 
" The unimportance of the peculiarity which exists in the labellum (namely, 
its flattened, or fringed and crested state) is manifested in a singular manner by a 
curious monster of this plant, which we have observed in an individual in the 
Horticultural Society's Garden. Among flowers of the ordinary structure two or 
three others were observed, in which the labellum was precisely of the same nature 
as that of Catasetum tridentatum ; that is to say, destitute of the crested appendage, 
and perfectly galeate and naked." 
This, I repeat, appeared to me so extraordinary a statement, especially as after 
seven years it had never been corroborated by any other case of the same kind, that 
I concluded I must have made some mistake, and I accordingly formed the genus 
Myanthus out of a species nearly allied to the very Catasetum cristatum, which in 
1826 I had seen sporting back to C. tridentatum. 
Not content with this, I added the genus Monachanthus, distinguishing it from 
Catasetum by the want of cirrhi on its column, and by its perianth being turned 
back ; and when the original species, M. viridis, was sent to me from Wentworth, 
previously to publication in this work, page 1752, I felt no doubt of its being an 
entirely distinct plant. Even when Lord Fitzwilliam assured me that it was beyond 
all doubt an accidental sport of Catasetum tridentatum, I still adhered to my idea 
that an imported plant of Monachanthus viridis had been accidentally taken for the 
latter common species. Nor do I think that as a botanist I was to be blamed for 
these errors ; the genera being founded upon characters which were apparently 
important, and which most assuredly no one could, a priori, have suspected could 
pass into each other in the manner that has been seen. If, however, it should be 
thought that I ought to have been aware of such metamorphoses, I at least have 
lost no time in acknowledging the mistakes, and putting others on their guard against 
them for the future. Bot- Reg. 1591. 
