Thunias are readily propagated by taking off some of the old bulbs when the young growths are about ten inches in height, but only part of the old bulb should be removed or cut off, dividing it in pieces of about six inches in length, and placing these in sand. The growths proceed from the joints, and these make plants during the season; they must be potted in due course, and often bloom during their second year.
Odontoglossum coronarium miniatum.—We received in August last from the garden of Lord Rendlesham, M.P., Woodbridge, Suffolk, a fine inflorescence of this rare Odontoglot, which is seldom seen in flower. The spike bore twelve of its gay-looking yellow and brown flowers. In growth it resembles O. coronarium, only it is much smaller; the flowers also resemble those of that species, but they are, like the growth, considerably smaller. Many growers believe this to be the same as O. brevifolium, but the two plants are quite distinct, both in flower and in growth, besides which O. brevifolium is much the freer flowerer of the two.—B. S. W.
PL. 68. ODONTOGLOSSUM PESCATOREI VEITCHIANUM.
ODONTOGLOSSUM PESCATOREI VEITCHIANUM.
[[Plate 68].]
Native of New Grenada.
Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs roundish or bluntly ovate, slightly-ribbed, about an inch high, diphyllous. Leaves strap-shaped or lorate-oblong, narrowed both to the base and apex, six inches long, of a deep green colour. Peduncle springing from the base of the pseudobulb, a foot in height in the only specimen which has yet flowered, bearing a raceme of about half-a-dozen flowers rather closely placed back to back at its upper end, with minute bracts at the base of their pedicels. Flowers two and a half inches across, the most beautiful which have yet appeared amongst the forms of this species; sepals oblong acute, over an inch in length, pure white, marked with two or three transverse curved bars of the richest crimson-purple or wine-purple; petals broadly ovate apiculate, slightly wavy, white, more irregularly transversely blotched than the sepals with the same rich purple colour; lip undulated at the edge, heart-shaped at the base, contracted in the middle, dilated and cuspidate at the apex, white with a few purple spots round the basal lobes, the disk including the contracted parts bright yellow, furnished on each side with a flat lacerated appendage streaked with red, having a pair of parallel plates between, and bearing a few deep red spots. Column with short lacerated wings.
Odontoglossum Pescatorei Veitchianum, Reichenbach fil., in Gardeners’ Chronicle, N.S., xvii., 588; Moore, Florist and Pomologist, 1882, 76.
There is no doubt that Odontoglossum Pescatorei is one of the most beautiful species of this extensive and exceedingly beautiful genus of Orchids. Its flowers borne in fine branching panicles, are most pleasing in their form and character, and of a chaste and lovely whiteness, besides which the plant is one of the most free-growing of the Odontoglots. There are in our collections many forms of this species, and most of them are well worthy of cultivation, the flowers being for the most part good in shape and of a pure white, which is a colour generally sought after by those who have a keen taste for floral beauty. A hundred of these gems can be cultivated in a small space, and they can now be purchased at so cheap a rate that they are within reach of everyone who can afford to erect a small house; and being really cool Orchids they require but little fire heat at any time, and none whatever during the summer months.
The variety, Veitchianum, which we now introduce to our readers, bears most charmingly and wonderfully spotted flowers, as will be seen from the accompanying plate. It bloomed last spring for the first time in the fine collection of Orchids belonging to Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons, of Chelsea, who imported it with many thousands of plants referrible to this specific type, and amongst them many hundreds of good kinds have been flowered, but none approaching in richness of hue or in beauty of marking, to the one now before us. We hope the Messrs. Veitch may be fortunate enough to bloom more of the same, as cultivators will be glad to procure it for their collections. The plant in question has, we understand, now passed out of their hands into Baron J. H. Schroeder’s collection at Staines.