ORCHIDACEAE QUAEDAM AMERICANAE 
Herbarium, also the petals are much narrower in proportion 
to their length than in other Mexican material I have re¬ 
ferred to E. virgatum. Whether or not there is a third species 
in this alliance is at present a debatable question. 
With Lindley’s specimens there is a sketch of a lip. 
This was probably made from the Mexican plant, as it 
exhibits the rounded mid-lobe characteristic of the Mexican 
material I have observed, and agrees with the Zuccarini 
specimen rather than with that of Hartweg, both of which 
are mounted on the same sheet in Lindley’s Herbarium. One 
wonders if by any chance Lindley could have had before 
him both the Mexican and Guatemalan specimens at the 
time he drew up the original description of Epidendrum 
virgatum. In the original description, his characterization 
of the inflorescence seems to include the Guatemalan 
specimen from Coban. He described the flowers as being 
in a long, lax, graceful panicle, the branches of which are 
simple and sometimes as much as a foot long, with nearly 
twenty flowers on each. Undoubtedly Lindley regarded 
the Mexican and Guatemalan specimens as one and the 
same species (as already stated they are mounted on the 
same sheet in his herbarium). In Folia Orchidacea, under 
E. virgatum, he cites only the Coban specimen, but in his 
notes he compared the general appearance of the plant to 
Epidendrum vitellinum, a eomparison which is hardly com¬ 
prehensible unless he had in mind the more dwarf habit of 
Mexican specimens. In the original description, in the 
third volume of Hooker’s Journal of Botany, he omitted 
a reference to pseudobulbs and leaves, as at that time he 
had seen only the inflorescence. However treated the 
situation is extremely perplexing. From the present state 
of our knowledge it seems best to regard the Zuccarini 
specimen as the type oiE. virgatum and to refer the Hartweg 
specimen from Coban to Epidendrum icthyphyllum, with 
which it seems to be conspecific. 
Guatemala, Department of Alta Verapaz, Coban, 
H. V. Tuerckheim II 1797, May 1907. Auf der Erde in 
Fichtenwaldern. 1350 meters altitude. (Type (two sheets,, 
one showing the habit, the other the inflorescence) in Gray 
30 
