To John Lindley   28 December [1861]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Dec. 28th

My dear Lindley—

Very many thanks for information about the Acropera luteola, to which name I will attach a note.2

Also many thanks for the Gongora fulva— what a strange monstrous flower! It is, I am sorry to say, quite masculine in its nature & cannot be female of the A. Luteola. The pollen-masses &c are widely different from in Monacanthus viridis the female of Catasetum tridentatum. Of course, one can tell nothing safely from dry specimens, but I cannot help the suspicion that Gongora is also a male.3

I have been looking again very carefully at the placentæ of Acropera & I can see no escape from ranking that plant as a male.4

Yours very truly obliged | Charles Darwin

1
The year is provided by the relationship to a series of other letters discussing the orchids mentioned in the letter (see nn. 2–4, below).
3
Monachanthus viridis (‘Monacanthus’ is a misspelling) is a synonym of Catasetum macrocarpum, the jumping orchid. Lindley had suggested that Gongora might be the female of the orchid Acropera luteola (see letter to John Lindley, 24 December [1861]).
4
For the basis upon which CD judged Acropera to be a male flower, see the letter to Daniel Oliver, 30 November [1861] and Orchids, pp. 206–9.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 A.] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3353,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3353