We remember seeing a splendid plant of Dendrobium Ainsworthii roseum exhibited by Mr. Mitchell, at the Whitsuntide Manchester Show, in May, 1877, in the form of a well furnished specimen two and a half feet in height and two feet in breadth, the stems being literally smothered with some hundreds of its beautiful crimson-lipped rosy-tinted flowers.
Referring to this same Manchester Show of 1877, Mr. Anderson, of Meadow Bank, a well-known Orchid grower, writes of this plant, as follows (Gardeners’ Chronicle, N.S. vii., 750):—“Possibly the gem of the Exhibition was Dendrobium Ainsworthii roseum. This is a most remarkable seedling partaking of the character of both its parents (D. nobile and D. heterocarpum), and in some respects superior to either. In point of floriferousness none of its parents can lay claim to such a quantity of nodes on the deciduous stems, each bearing, or rather emitting, its quota of flowers. I counted on one stem sixteen short racemes, each two and three-flowered. The flower itself has the sepals and petals of moniliforme rather than of nobile, white shaded with an almost imperceptible tint of rose, and tipped distinctly with that soft pleasing colour. The labellum is flat, like an expanded heterocarpum, reflexing a little towards the centre, with a blotch covering three-quarters of its surface with deep veined purplish or rather mulberry-crimson, edged very distinctly with white, and the extremity slightly tipped with crimson. This I look upon as one of the greatest gains in hybridization, whether we regard the colour of the flower, or the general floriferousness of the plant, or its free although not awkward habit of growth. As an Orchid enthusiast of the last five and twenty years, I would pronounce it one of the greatest gains that may be counted up in the whole known Orchid family.”
Altogether this is a most desirable plant, and being easy of cultivation, and of remarkably free-flowering habit, it should find a place in every collection.
PL. 21. AERIDES LOBBII.
AËRIDES LOBBII.
[[Plate 21].]
Native of Moulmein.
Epiphytal. Stems erect, densely foliose, producing the stout aërial roots from between the leaf bases. Leaves evergreen, close set, distichous, leathery in texture, loriform, channelled, obliquely bilobed at the apex, of a deep green colour, obsoletely spotted with purple, paler on the under surface. Racemes axillary, many-flowered, long, branched, cylindrical, pendulous. Flowers very numerous, medium-sized, fragrant, the sepals and petals white, flushed with rosy purple and spotted with deeper rose-purple, the broader lip with a bar of rosy purple, darkest in the centre, from base to apex, and bordered with white; sepals and petals elliptic-oblong, nearly equal, incurved; lip much larger, clawed, the claw hollowed out and coadunate with the base of the column, the limb ovate or somewhat lozenge-shaped, wavy at the margin; spur arcuate, somewhat compressed laterally. Column short, in form resembling the neck and beak of a bird, with the front edge produced and folded over the stigmatic cavity.
Aërides Lobbii, Hort. Veitch; Lemaire, Illustration Horticole, xv., t. 559; Williams, Orchid Growers’ Manual, ed. 5, 67; Rand, Orchids, 149; Britten & Gower, Orchids for Amateurs, 177.
This very beautiful brightly-coloured plant was discovered in Moulmein by Mr. Thomas Lobb, who sent it to the Messrs. Veitch & Sons, of Chelsea, about the year 1856. It is of remarkably free-flowering and decorative character, and is no doubt one of the most beautiful species of this fine genus of Orchids, being valuable alike on account of its compact-growing habit, and the strikingly ornamental nature of its inflorescence. There appear to be several varieties of this plant distributed through our Orchid collections, all of them handsome and deserving of cultivation, but that which we now illustrate, from a finely grown, elegantly branching spike, kindly sent to us by C. J. Hill, Esq., of Nottingham, and referred to in the note published under Plate 15, is the finest form, and the most freely bloomed specimen we have met with. We were, in truth, charmed with the size and colour of the flowers of this plant, when recently inspecting Mr. Hill’s collection, the long spikes of blossom which were produced by so small a plant being quite extraordinary.
There is no genus of Orchids that surpasses Aërides in having handsome evergreen foliage, so that, even when not in blossom, they are exceedingly pretty objects; while to this it must be added, that their flower-spikes are beautiful, and their flowers deliciously fragrant; some, of course, are more handsome than others, but all are worth growing: in fact, we have never seen an indifferent Aërides. They have every good quality that a plant of this character can possess, and they are of easy cultivation, so that anyone who has a stove may manage them successfully. They do not require so much heat as some persons imagine; the temperature need not be above 65° in the winter; more is, indeed, required in summer, but even then sun-heat should be fully utilised, and very little fire-heat should be used.