Stanhopea gibbosa.—We have received from Alfred G. Wallis, Esq., of Balham, a grand spike of this great beauty. The plant, Mr. Wallis informs us, is growing in a wire basket about fifteen inches in diameter, and has borne five spikes of flowers, four of them with two flowers on a spike and one with one flower. The flowers are large, about six inches across; the petals are yellow, barred and blotched with crimson, the sepals assuming a darker tint of the same colour. Mr. Peacock was also successful in flowering this plant in June of the present year. It is a great pity Stanhopeas are not more popular among Orchid cultivators, as they form a very showy group of plants, their only drawback being the short time they continue in flower, and their very powerful and unpleasant odour.—B. S. W.
Disa grandiflora.—We received a wonderfully fine spike of this superb Orchid from Mr. Thomas Speed, the Duke of Devonshire’s gardener, at Chatsworth. The spike was two feet six inches in length from the pot, and bore twelve flowers of large size and fine colour—a bright scarlet and crimson, the lip veined with pink, which gives a nice contrast. It is a most charming cool-house Orchid that every one may grow who has an ordinary greenhouse. Mr. Speed is a most successful cultivator of this fine plant. We saw the first small plant he had to begin with some years ago, and this plant has gone on improving, and many offshoots have been taken from it which have also made fine specimens. The Disa really seems to be no trouble to cultivate. The way in which Mr. Speed treats it is to grow it in a common greenhouse, where it gets plenty of fresh air and light, and here it requires nothing but plenty of water in the growing season. It is grown in sphagnum moss and rough fibrous peat and loam. There is no doubt that this plant does not get shifted from the place where it was found to do well. This is a great secret in plant culture. When a plant is found doing well, let it remain where it is, unless on trial another place is found to be equally suitable. Few people grow this Disa well. The reason is, that they keep it in too warm a house, and coddle it too much. If they would follow Mr. Speed’s plan, there is no doubt they would succeed, if the plants are kept free from insects, and provided with sweet material about their roots.—B. S. W.
PL. 108. CATTLEYA TRIANÆ FORMOSA.
CATTLEYA TRIANÆ FORMOSA.
[[Plate 108].]
Native of Colombia.
Epiphytal. Stems oblong, club-shaped, furrowed, the lower parts enveloped in whitish membranaceous sheaths. Leaves solitary, coriaceous, ligulate-oblong, obtuse, emarginate, deep green. Scape two to three-flowered, proceeding from a terminal oblong compressed bract or sheath. Flowers large, six inches in depth and seven inches in breadth, richly coloured; sepals lanceolate, acute, about three-fourths of an inch broad, blush or very dilute rosy-purple; petals much broader—two and a half inches, having the margins much undulated, of the same blush or pallid purple hue as the sepals; lip well displayed, convolute at the base so as to enclose the column, and of a pallid purplish colour, the apical portion roundish, emarginate, and expanded, nearly two and a half inches across, the margin including the portion surrounding the throat, very much undulated so as to form a crenate-lobate frill, the surface for about two-thirds of the front of a deep rich magenta-purple, the disk and throat orange-yellow, the upper edge paler, and the magenta tint passing backwards in streaks over the disk.
Cattleya Trianæ formosa, Williams MS.
We now present to our readers a portrait of a most splendid variety of Cattleya Trianæ, of which them are numerous handsome forms, varying in colour from rose to crimson and magenta, and also to pure white, with intermediate tints. During the past five years there have been very large importations, but none that we have seen surpass the varieties we have already in cultivation, such as Dodgsoni, Osmanii, Russelliana, and Williamsii. These varieties are most difficult to improve upon, but probably we shall get other splendid forms among the large importations as they come to us from the different districts which the species inhabits. The Trianæ section has given us a grand lot of varieties for winter decoration especially; there are very many distinct types among them, and they come into blossom at a time, during the dull months of winter, when flowers are wanted to make our houses gay. Our drawing was taken from a very large specimen that has been grown and bloomed by us for several years, and which we consider one of the most beautiful varieties in cultivation—we believe our plate will show us to be fully justified in so doing.
Cattleya Trianæ formosa is a free and strong-growing evergreen kind, attaining fifteen inches high, with dark green foliage and strong sheaths. The flowers are of large size and substance, and are thrown well up so as to have a bold appearance, much more so than many others of its class. The sepals and petals are of a blush pink, and the lip rich rose-magenta, being beautifully frilled and edged with a lighter tint of the same colour, two and a quarter inches in diameter, have the throat orange veined with a deeper orange. The flowers are produced in February and March, lasting for several weeks in beauty.