September 3, 1891. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
197 
Lycaste costata. 
A peculiar Orchid in its floral colouring is Lycaste costata, of 
which a drawing is reproduced in fig. 29. The sepals and petals 
are greenish, the lip white or yellow tinted. It was received from 
the Cordilleras over thirty years ago by Mr. R. Hanbury, and is 
still found in collections of Orchidic curiosities. A plant was 
shown at one of the Royal Horticultural Society’s meetings this 
year, when it attracted attention even amongst many brightly 
coloured and handsome Orchids. 
Orchid Nomenclature at Kew. 
“ The Royal Kew Gardens Bulletin of Miscellaneous Informa¬ 
tion” for August contains some interesting information with 
regard to Orchid nomenclature, and the authorities deem it de¬ 
sirable to state the position of Kew with regard to this matter. 
In no other country are pains and money so lavishly expended on 
the cultivation of the plants of this family as in England. In no 
other country are so many species to be found in a living state as 
in our private collections. And a large capital is invested in the 
commerce by which these collections are supplied. It is the 
business of botanical science to furnish such plants with names 
under which they can be recognised, and with technical descrip¬ 
tions, by means of which the names can be fixed and the plants 
identified. For this purpose it is necessary that a standard of 
nomenclature should be maintained by some competent authority. 
During the middle of the present century this function was per¬ 
formed by the well-known botanist, Dr. Lindley. After his death, 
his admirable private herbarium of Orchids, amounting to 3000 
sheets, was purchased in 1865 by the Government for Kew. 
In 1863 Dr. H. G. Reichenbach was appointed Professor and 
Director of the Botanical Gardens at Hamburg, and from that 
time made the study of Orchids the scientific business of his life. 
He was speedily recognised as occupying the place of Lindley, and 
cultivators of Orchids in all countries were in the habit of sending 
their specimens to Hamburgh for identification and determination. 
Meanwhile, Kew had continued to amass what is, on the whole, pro¬ 
bably the largest comprehensive herbarium of these plants. It was 
Professor Reichenbach’s custom to spend in most years a few weeks 
at Kew, and he had the opportunity of examining and, in some 
ca3es, of describing the new accessions. He was, however, in the 
habit of describing the novelties sent him by correspondents from 
English collections in the pages of a contemporary, and of these, 
for the most part, no other record exists at Kew. Thus in the 
genus Dendrobium about 160 species are represented in the Kew 
herbarium by names above, and in Epidendrum as many as 200. 
The defect of Professor Reichenbach’s method was that he 
never brought the scattered work of his life to anything like a 
comprehensive review. To a certain extent he had the clue to it 
himself, but when oppressed with failing health in the latter years 
of his life, he seems to have become in some degree overwhelmed 
with the enormous amount of material which he had accumulated, 
and it is now ascertained that he often described the same species 
more than once under independent names. 
There is the further difficulty that he was not a felicitous 
expert in the art of describing plants, and from his bare descriptions 
alone it is often all but impossible to identify the species which he 
had in view. 
This difficulty would not have been considerable if after his 
death in 1889 he had, as it was confidently expected he would do, 
left his herbarium to some public institution where it would be 
open to the inspection of those who took up his work. For reasons 
on which it is easy to speculate, but for which it is difficult to 
account, he bequeathed his collection to the Imperial Hof Museum 
at Vienna, on the condition that they should be sealed up for 
twenty-five years. This singular provision undoubtedly placed the 
“ Orchid world ” in a rather cruel position. Reichenbach was no 
longer available to give them names ; and his herbarium was not 
accessible to ascertain what he had done in the past. To this no 
one having an unnamed Orchid in his hands possessed very much 
in the way of a clue. Nevertheless something had to be done, and 
amateurs of Orchids turned to Kew for help. It seemed a proper 
part of the functions of the national botanical establishment to 
render all the assistance in its power as regards the solution of 
purely botanical problems. Kew was not, as will have been seen, on 
the whole, badly equipped for the task. In the first place it pos- 
sesed Lindley’s collections, the classical starting point of systematic 
orchidology. Next, Mr. Bentham had devoted two years at Kew 
to the elaboration of the family for “Bentham and Hooker’s 
Genera Plantarum.” This was published in 1883. Bentham 
thoroughly sorted the copious material at Kew into genera, which 
he defined on a clear basis. 
Reichenbach’s works upon various collections preserved at Kew, 
which he described and published, is of course available here. 
Moreover, Sir Joseph Hooker, during 1888-90 thoroughly worked 
out the Orchids of India, amounting to about 1300°species (in 
113 genera) for the fifth volume of his “ Flora of British India.” 
Not to speak of other countries, the collection of South African 
Orchids is pronounced by Mr. Bolus, F.L.S., their most recent 
monographer, to be the most complete in existence. The Kew 
collection of living Orchids now amounts to 1400 species, the 
nomenclature of which is all carefully determined ; the most 
recent enumeration of the number of existing species is that of 
Sir Joseph Hooker, who puts them at 5000. 
Fia. 29 .—lycaste costata. 
On the whole Kew probably stands in a better position to serve 
as a standard of Orchid nomenclature than any other botanical 
establishment. The only real difficulty in its way is how to deal 
with Reichenbach’s indeterminable descriptions and nomenclature. 
Various correspondents have, however, rendered very useful 
assistance in filling up this gap by the communication of specimens 
from living plants which Reichenbach had named. Much more 
might be done in this direction, and in time it can hardly be 
doubted that the vast proportion of Reichenbach’s types might be 
recovered. There is, however, always the risk that when an 
unnamed Orchid cannot be run down in the Kew Herbarium it 
may not really be undescribed, but may be lurking somewhere with 
a name in Reichenbach’s collections. This, however, is a problem 
which, for the next quarter of a century, cannot be solved. For 
practical purposes it has, therefore, been decided to assume that 
such an Orchid is new, and to describe it with an appropriate 
name. This task has been entrusted to Mr. Rolfe, one of the 
assistants in the Kew Herbarium ; and as the work will be done in 
official time, the descriptions will be published from time to time 
in the “ Kew Bulletin.” 
It must be the aim of every botanist to avoid the multiplica 
tion of names and the piling up of synonyms. But the world 
