1. A flower, one of the petals and the honey-cup cut off; to shew the situation, and place of the parts of fructification.
2. The Honey-cup.
3. The Seed-bud, Shaft, Summit, and Chives; the small hood which covers the Chives, lifted up.
This long genus of plants, so little known hitherto, but in our books, bids fair to become one of the greatest ornaments of our hot-houses; 20 species we already enumerate, in the different collections in the vicinity of London; one of which, the present plant, has not flowered in this kingdom, till this year, although introduced, so long ago as 1793, by the late J. Slater, Esq. of Layton-stone; at the same time with the two varieties of the Double Camellia, from China. Our figure was taken in September 1801, from a plant which had been placed in the spring of the same year, in the Conservatory built on purpose for the protection of Chinese plants, and where they flourish to a degree, not seen before in this country, in the garden of G. Hibbert Esq. Clapham common. It is propagated by offsets, from the root; is rather a hardy hot-house plant; and thrives most in a mixture of sandy loam, and peat; about one fourth of the loam, and three fourths peat, or leaf-mould.
Upon the first observation of this plant, we were inclined to think it the species designed by Thunberg in his Icon. Plant. Japon. 28, under the Genus Limodorum; and afterwards, altered by him, in the Linnæan Trans. Vol. ii. p. 327, to Epidendrum striatum. But upon close examination of it, as answering his descriptions, &c. we cannot but think it, if not a different species, at least a very strong variety of his plant; wherefore, we have retained the name it is in common known by, in the various collections in which we have seen it. If we were to decide on the subject, it should be to place both that and this plant again to Limodorum; to which, they hold greater affinity than to Epidendrum; but indeed, we have an opinion, that one title might readily serve for the plants constituting both genera.[Pg 292]
