Odontoglossum mulus.—D. Tod, Esq., Eastwood Park, Thorliebank, by Glasgow, has sent in flowers of a fine variety of Odontoglossum mulus, which bloomed with him last April. The spike, Mr. Tod informs us, bore sixteen flowers, and although this is no great number for O. mulus, which generally comes with a large branched panicle, it must have been a fine sight, as the flowers of Mr. Tod’s variety are not only very large, but very brightly coloured.—B. S. W.

A Gigantic Orchid.—Messrs. F. Sander & Co., of St. Albans, have lately received an enormous specimen of Cattleya Skinneri, certainly the largest mass of an Orchid ever imported. The plant was found growing in the crown of a tree, near Cartago, in Costa Rica, where it was originally planted in a garden belonging to a native, by whom it has since been cultivated, so that although this plant has been found in its native habitat, it is, nevertheless, a cultivated specimen. This plant has long been known to botanical travellers, Skinner, Roezl, and others having seen it in flower. It is stated to have produced, at one time, over 1,500 flowers. Its dimensions are six feet in height by seven feet in diameter; its weight about twelve hundredweight. We understand Mr. Sander is about erecting a house for its reception, where we suppose it will figure as a piece de resistance of the establishment.—H. W.

Pl. 143. CŒLOGYNE BARBATA.

CŒLOGYNE BARBATA.
[[Plate 143].]
Native of India: Bhothan, Khasya, &c.

Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs roundish-ovate, plump, two-leaved, with brownish lanceolate bracts at their base. Leaves narrowed below into a petiole, elliptic-oblong, with a stout costa, plicate, leathery, one and a half-inch wide, and from six inches to a foot long including the petiole, of a lively green. Peduncles erect, rigid, springing from between the leaves, terete, terminating in a dense raceme of flowers, below which are several pairs of abortive imbricated pale brown bracts. Flowers large, white, with a peculiar sooty or pitchy stain covering the inner side of the lip, breaking out into fine pencillings towards the margin; sepals white, oblong-ovate, broadish at the base, narrowed to the acute point; petals white, lanceolate acute, broadest at the base; lip white, oblong, three-lobed, saccate at the base, fringed with brown-based hairs on the anterior margins, and bearded with hairs entirely dark brown on the three veins of the disk, forming three shaggy crests, the side lobes tinged with pale flesh colour or pink outside. Column white, deflexed, bilobed at the end.

Cœlogyne barbata, Griffith, Itinerary Notes 72; Id. Notulæ ad Plantas Asiaticas, iii., 280, t. 291, fig. 2; Lindley, Folia Orchidacea, art. Cœlogyne, No. 21; Reichenbach fil., in Walpers’ Annales Botanices Systematicæ; vi., 229.

Of our present subject Dr. Lindley remarks (Folia Orchidacea, l. c.)—“This is, perhaps, the finest of this fine genus. The coriaceous leaves are more than fifteen inches long; the scapes are erect, very stiff, as long as the leaves, and furnished at the apex with an imbricated sheath of bud scales, out of which appears a flexuous raceme four to six inches long, composed of very large blunt deciduous bracts. The flowers are fully two inches and at half in diameter, pure white, except very long hairy fringes which are brown at their base, where they border the lip, and wholly brown where they cover the veins, and form three shaggy crests.” The only figure previously published is a very indifferent one of Griffith’s quoted above.

In the Cœlogyne we now bring to the notice of our readers we have one of the most useful species of a comparatively large genus, and one that blooms during the winter months, when white flowers are sought after. It is one, moreover, the flowers of which stand well when cut. We are indebted to Mr. W. Bull, of Chelsea, for the introduction of this species; which is a free bloomer when the bulbs are strong. It is a plant which possesses many good qualities, being a free grower as well as a free bloomer, and having the advantage of bearing fine evergreen foliage; it will thrive well in the cool house with Odontoglots; and besides all this, it is a cheap plant, so that everyone having a cool house can procure and grow it without much expense or trouble. Our drawing was taken from a specimen which flowered in the Victoria and Paradise Nurseries.