Aërides Lobbii blooms in June and July, and lasts for three or four weeks in beauty. The plant, from which our illustration was taken, was but a foot in height, and the magnificent flowering racemes we saw upon it were fully two feet six inches in length, with two branches each a foot in length. The sepals and petals are white, spotted with bright rose colour; the lip is also of a bright rose colour, slightly veined and margined with white. The flowers are deliciously fragrant.
The plant being very compact in growth, occupies but little space, so that anyone having a small vacant place in the Orchid-house or plant stove, might readily grow it. It will thrive either in a basket suspended from the roof of the house, or in a pot planted in sphagnum moss, with good drainage, and a moderate supply of water during the summer season, while in winter only just sufficient should be given to keep the moss damp. The plants do not, however, like to be dried up, as this often causes them to loose their bottom leaves, which is a great disfigurement. They require plenty of light, but do not like to be exposed to the burning sunshine. Canvas should therefore be used as a shading during all the bright sunny portion of the day, but when the sun has, in some degree, lost its burning heat the blinds may be raised. Never allow water to get into the hearts of the plants in winter. In summer a fine rose should be employed to syringe them, which operation should be done about three o’clock in the afternoon, when the house is closed.
They should be always kept free from insects. Scale, thrips, and many other insects are to be reckoned amongst their enemies, and cockroaches, if allowed to attack them, will often eat away their young roots and flower-spikes.
PL. 22. CYPRIPEDIUM LAWRENCIANUM.
CYPRIPEDIUM LAWRENCEANUM.
[[Plate 22].]
Native of Borneo.
Epiphytal. Stem almost none, the leaves springing from the crown of stout roots. Leaves radical, distichous, coriaceous, broadly oblong, acute, channelled, a foot long, the upper surface marbled with a dark green mosaic pattern on a whitish-green ground colour. Scapes solitary in the leaf-axils, stout, pubescent, with an oblong-ovate acute sheathing bract near the top, from which the flower or flowers emerge. Flowers very large, in the way of those of C. barbatum majus; dorsal sepal sub-rotund or very broadly-ovate, acute, white, with numerous (about thirteen) shining curved purplish veins which run out nearly or quite to the edge, and usually alternate with others which are short and less boldly marked; lateral sepals connate, small, oblong, greenish white, with five dark purplish veins; petals fully half an inch wide, divaricate, linear-oblong ciliate, green in the upper half, with purple margin, stained with dull purple towards the tip, and with several dark fleshy warts along each margin, the lower half flushed with pale wine red; lip very large, pouch-shaped, the lateral horns much developed, purplish brown above, yellowish green below, with numerous warts on the inside. Staminode of a wax-like yellowish white, the posterior exterior border split in the centre, and having five anterior teeth, the middle one much larger than the rest.
Cypripedium Lawrenceanum, Reichenbach fil., in Gardeners’ Chronicle, N.S., x., 748; Veitch and Sons, Catalogue of New Plants, 1879, p. 9, 23, with figure; Florist and Pomologist, 1880, 112, with figure.
The introduction of this splendid species of Lady’s Slipper is one of the results of Mr. F. W. Burbidge’s visit to Borneo, in the service of Messrs. Veitch & Sons, of Chelsea. It is a very robust grower, and flowered for the first time in the autumn of 1878, when it was named by Professor Reichenbach, in the place above quoted, in honour of Sir Trevor Lawrence, Bart., M.P., an ardent orchidophilist, and the possessor of a collection of Orchids of unequalled richness and beauty.
The Cypripediums now form a large family group, and rank amongst the most useful of Orchids that can be cultivated, since the lasting quality of their flowers, especially for exhibition and decorative purposes, is something extraordinary. Many of them in addition possess beautifully variegated foliage, as in the species we now figure, which has the leaves most distinctly marked with light and dark green. Our drawing was taken from a very fine plant in the select collection of H. M. Pollett, Esq., Fernside, Bickley, a gentleman who is a great lover of Orchids, and who has the wisdom to secure healthy young plants at the outset, in order that he may see them grow on into good specimens, such as the one now before us has done. It gives one great pleasure to see plants so well cultivated.