Odontoglossum Coradinei, which is very rare, forms a compact-growing plant, furnished with lively green foliage, and producing its flowers, about nine in number, on a drooping spike; the sepals and petals are primrose colour, spotted with a warm brown, and the lip is primrose, with an oblong spot of brown in the centre. The plant blooms during winter, and lasts for several weeks in full beauty. It requires to be grown in the cool house, and should have the same temperature and treatment as O. Alexandræ.
Mr. Lee’s Vandas.—We were favoured recently with a box of Orchid flowers from W. Lee, Esq., Downside, Leatherhead. The box contained twenty-one grand spikes of varieties of Vanda suavis and V. tricolor, amongst which were some of the finest forms we have ever seen. It was, indeed, a feast of Vandas to have so many fine varieties side by side. Amongst the varieties of V. tricolor were many forms—from a pale variety with a whitish ground up to the most superbly marked one of the series, which Mr. Lee calls the “Downside” variety. The markings of this gem are very rich and distinct, the spots being well defined, of a bright chestnut-brown, and the lips a rich magenta. V. tricolor Patersoni and V. tricolor superba were quite in the shade by the side of this great beauty. V. tricolor Warnerii was also grand, but of a different type to the last-mentioned plant, having rosy margins around the sepals and petals; this plant is well figured in Warner’s Select Orchidaceous Plants.
Of Vanda suavis there were some magnificent forms, one, marked Lee’s variety, being especially fine; this had thirteen flowers on the spike; the sepals and petals were of fine form, with distinct pale brownish-crimson spots. In some cases the spotting of this variety is very peculiar, especially on the lower parts of the sepals and petals, where the spots or stripes are from half an inch to three-fourths of an inch long, rendering the markings very distinct.
Accompanying the Vandas was a fine variety of Cattleya Mendelii, called Jamesiana, with rose-coloured sepals and petals, and a broad well-fringed lip, two inches across, of a bright magenta, with the throat yellow, streaked with dull purple; the petals are distinctly blotched with bright magenta at the apex.—B. S. W.
PL. 91. PHAJUS TUBERCULOSUS.
PHAIUS TUBERCULOSUS.
[[Plate 91].]
Native of Madagascar.
Epiphytal. Stems (pseudobulbs) fusiform or sub-clavate jointed, dark green, annularly marked by the pallid bases of the leaf-sheaths. Leaves oblong-acuminate, about a foot long, plicate, narrowed below, the base again enlarged so as to clasp the stems. Scape produced with the young growth, green, below bearing lanceolate imbricated bracts, and terminating in an erect raceme of six or more flowers. Flowers spreading, two and a half inches across, of singular form; sepals ovate-acuminate, stoutish, pure white; petals of the same colour and texture as the sepals, but rather broader and more oblong; lip obliquely funnel-shaped at the base, with a blunt chin projecting upwards, three-lobed; the two basal lobes large, suborbicular, meeting the column, yellow, thickly blotched with irregular spots and dots of a dull crimson, producing a bronzy effect, furnished with scattered hairs on the surface, wavy at the edge; front lobe smaller, roundish-emarginate or subcordate, wavy, white, with rosy purple marginal spots, closely frilled; disk yellowish white, with three deep orange-yellow crests or ridges towards the front, the crests bluntly toothed and wavy along the upper edge, the central one forked about the middle; near the base, a short distance from the column, is a small tuft of pale sulphur capitate hairs. Column slender, incurved, club-shaped, white, tinted with purple in front.
Phaius tuberculosus, Blume, Museum Botanicum Lugduno-Batavum, ii., 181; Id., Orchidées de l’Archipel Indien et du Japon, 13, t. ii. B.; Gardeners’ Chronicle, N.S., xv., 341, fig. 67; Reichenbach fil., in Gardeners’ Chronicle, N.S., xv., 428.
Limodorum tuberculosum, Du Petit-Thouars, Orchidées recueillies sur les trois Iles Australe d’Afrique, t. 31.
Bletia tuberculosa, Sprengel, Systema Plantarum, iii., 744; Lindley, Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants, 123.