The Thunias form a small genus of very beautiful Orchids, which have the further recommendation of being easy of cultivation. They are deciduous in habit, losing their stems and leaves after they have bloomed and completed their growth. That which we now figure, T. Marshalliana, is a most distinct and showy species. Our sketch of which was taken from a well grown plant belonging to W. Cobb, Esq., Silverdale Lodge, Sydenham, who has a well selected and finely grown collection of Orchids. This plant was indeed a marvel of cultivation, and did great credit to Mr. Catt, the gardener.
Thunia Marshalliana, like its congeners is a free-growing plant, furnished with tall red stems. These stems are of annual duration only, and grow from two to three feet in height, perishing as soon as the flowering and growth is completed; they are thickly clothed with distichous leaves, which are of a pale glaucous green colour, and three inches or more in length. The flowers are produced in large terminal spikes, and have the sepals and petals white, and the lip white, beautifully veined and fringed with deep orange colour, margined with white. The plant generally blooms in June and July, and continues flowering on for several weeks; it makes a fine decorative subject, as well as a fine plant for the exhibition table. We have more than once seen some noble specimens shown at the Whitsuntide National Show of the Royal Botanic and Horticultural Society of Manchester.
We figured the charming Thunia Bensoniæ in our second volume at [Plate 67], where will be found a full account of the treatment given to that beautiful species. T. Marshalliana requires a similar mode of cultivation, and is propagated in the same manner.
Oncidium Lanceanum, a very handsome variety of which is figured on the preceding Plate, was first discovered in Surinam by John H. Lance, Esq., by whom it was brought to England in the year 1834. In a letter quoted by Dr. Lindley in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (2 ser. ii, 100, t. 5.), Mr. Lance states that he first found it growing on the trunk of a large Tamarind tree, near the Government House, and that he subsequently met with a number of the plants in different parts of the colony, generally attached to the stems or branches of Tamarind, Sapodilla or Calabash trees. With him it failed to grow in rotten wood and light earth, but grew well when fastened to the branches of the Orange, the Soursop, the Mammee, and even the Brugmansia arborea, producing vigorous stems with upwards of twenty blossoms on each.
The scent of the blossom Mr. Lance goes on to state “is extremely fragrant, and is retained after the flower is dried, only becoming fainter and more of a spicy flavour than when fresh. The plant remains in full beauty from ten or twelve days—a long period in that climate; and I found that it always required a shady situation, and a living stem to grow upon, without which it would not produce its flowers in the highest perfection.” Dr. Lindley, in one place, compares the fragrance to that of the Garden Pink, and in another to that of Vanilla.
PL. 131. ODONTOGLOSSUM NEVADENSE.
ODONTOGLOSSUM NEVADENSE.
[[Plate 131].]
Native of New Grenada.
Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs large, oblong-ovate, compressed, about three inches high and two inches broad, diphyllous. Leaves lorate-lanceolate, keeled, very much narrowed to the base, of a dark green. Scapes radical, bearing drooping racemes of from twelve to fifteen blossoms. Flowers large and pleasingly coloured; sepals spreading in a narrow triangle, lanceolate, slightly grooved in the centre, clear bright chestnut, with a narrow even edge of yellow; petals smaller, lanceolate, spreading, an inch and a half long, of the same colour as the sepals but with more distinct yellow tips, and about two forked bars of a pale yellow colour at the base, opposite the lateral lobes of the lip, the margin slightly wavy; lip white, three-lobed, the lateral lobes erect, crescent-shaped, spotted with chestnut, the broad rounded front lobe deeply fringed, cuspidato-acuminate, the base cuneate, channelled, the disk with a bifid crest, and three obcuneate conical brown spots. Column erect, half-an-inch long, galeate, spotted with red, and having two short horn-like lateral auricles.
Odontoglossum nevadense, Reichenbach fil., MS. in Horto Lindeniano ac Mendeliano; Id. Xenia Orchidacea, ii., t. 191, figs. 1, 2; Id. Gardeners’ Chronicle, N.S. xv., 136; André, L’Illustration Horticole, 3 ser., t. 45.