Stanhope a (stanhope a)

[NL. (Frost, 1829), named after Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope, president of the London Medico-botanical Society.] A genus of orchids, of the tribe Vandeæ, type of the subtribe Stanhopicæ. It is characterized by a loose raceme of a few large flowers with spread and nearly equal sepals, a thick fleshy lip which is commonly wavy or twisted, a straight erect or incurved column usually prolonged and two-winged above, and pollinia with flattened stalks and scale-shaped glands. The peculiar lip is highly polymorphous and complex, bearing lateral lobes which are often thickened into a solid ma forming a spherical, oblong, or saccate hypochilium, a middle lobe or epichilium which is itself often three-lobed and attached by a distinct joint, and sometimes at its base other appendages, lobes or horns-the me tach ilium. There are about 20 species, natives of tropical America from Brazil to Mexico. They are epiphytes with very short stems bearing many sheaths and a single large pli cate leaf. The stem soon thickens into a fleshy pseudobulb, from the base of which the flower-stem proceeds. The flowers are very remarkable for their structure, size, and rich colorings, usually brown-spotted, yellow, or purple; for their great fragrance, whence the recently introduced perfume called stanhope a; and for their growth downward, not upward as in ordinary plants a habit first discovered by the accidental breaking of a flower-pot in which the blo oms had buried themselves in the earth. They are now cultivated under gla in hard-wood baskets with interstices through which the flowers protrude. Stanhope lens, pre . See lens, pre 1. stanhoscope (stan'ho-skop), n. [ stanner