whitish, streaked with green, the extremity brown. Two lower segments combined for half their length, so as to form one erect, green piece, about equal in length to the rest of the flower, and having two acuminated and rather spreading segments. Labellum lanceolate, erect, reddish-green, having at its base a penicellate appendage pointing downwards. Columns erect, greenish, with two broad, white wings occupying the upper half, and standing forward, projecting into a blunt lobe at the base, and at the extremity into a subulate lobe. Anther sessile, inserted between the two upper lobes of the wings, two celled, each cell bearing two flattened pulverent pollen=masses.
The curious and beautiful New Holland Genus Pterostylis is known to Botanists by Mr. Brown's excelllent character, and by the splendid designs and analysis of one species (P. grandiflora,) executed by Mr. Bauer: but no where, perhaps, has any species been cultivated, except at the Royal Gardens at Kew, whence Mr. Aiton has most kindly communicated drawings of three species which had flowered in that rich collection. The present individual was marked as P. grandiflora: but it differs from Mr. Brown's plant so named, the prescence of large radical leaves, in the different shape of the labellumm and, especiallt, in the much shorter segments of the lower lip of the flower. To me it appears to agree better with the character of P. curta, as well as with a specimen in my possession ot the plant, for which I am indebted to Mr. Brown. In our plant, howeverm the lower lip is nearly, if not quite, equal in length with the galea, while in Mr. Brown's P. curta it is shorter.
The specimen here figured was sent by Mr. Allan Cunningham, and flowered at Kew in October, 1829. The species was discovered by Mr. Brown in the neighbourhood of Port Jackson.
Fig. 1. Front view of a Flower. 2. Labellum. 3. Column. 4. Anther. 5. Pollen-Masses.–Magnified.
