108 
THE FLORIST’S JOURNAL, 
valuable. The mere details of any one person’s practice are, 
as it were, the plucked flowers, which produce nothing, and 
speedily waste away. The philosophy, that is, the first princi¬ 
ples, is the root, which, if properly treated, will send up and 
expand blooms again and again. 
ON THE CHARACTERS, VARIETIES, AND CULTIVATION OF 
CATASETUM. 
BY MR. P. N. DON. 
Catasetum is one of the most singular of all orc’nideous 
genera, being one in which the power of sporting into innumera¬ 
ble varieties or forms, and at the same time so dissimilar to the 
parents in the shapes of the flowers, is so great, that, at one time, 
it actually deceived the learned professor of botany in the 
university of London ; and he created three genera, if not six, 
out of the single genus Catasetum.; and the very plant from which 
he formed his genus Catasetum was not even a species, but only 
a form of his genus Myanthus; and even the genus Monacanthus 
is only another form of the genus Myanthus , or, properly speak¬ 
ing, Catasetum , as that was the first genus found ; therefore, the 
genus Monacanthus , and also Myanthus , come under the name 
of Catasetum; and it is a question whether the genera Cycnoches, 
and also Mormodes , will not prove to be only sectional divisions 
of the genus Catasetum; for there is not any character to separate 
them from Catasetum , but the form of the flowers, which has 
been shown to be of no value in the genus Myanthus and Mon- 
acantlius; and even the genus Cyrtopodium , I much question 
whether it should be separated from Catasetum , for in habit they 
are very similar. The very plant from which Dr. Lindley 
formed his genus Monacantlius flowered the following season, 
and produced the flowers of Catasetum tridentatum; and some¬ 
time afterwards, a plant flowered at Chatsworth, and produced 
the flow r ers of the genus Myanthus and Monacanthus , and also 
Catasetum tridentatum on the same spike. Dr. Lindley, after 
seeing that, was obliged to unite the genera. Mr. Schomburgh, 
in a paper on the genus Catasetum says, that he has seen whole 
savannahs filled with Catasetum tridentatum , but he never saw a 
