Dr. Lindley has justly remarked of this plant, " species 

 pulchrior omnibus." Nothing can exceed the delicacy 

 and texture of the racemes of flowers : and Dr. Roxburgh 

 observes, that they are not inferior in beauty to any in 

 the whole tribe of Orchide^;. It is a native of the East 

 Indies, and it appears to have first blossomed in Europe in 

 the Kew Gardens in 1820. The plant flowers in the spring 

 months, continuing long in perfection. Our figure was 

 drawn in May, 1843. It is cultivated on a portion of 

 the branch of a tree, to which the roots cling sufficiently 

 to give it support. 



Descr. Stem short and clothed with long, strap-shaped, 

 channelled, distichous leaves, singularly obliquely truncate, 

 and, as it were, erose at the extremity. Raceme from the 

 axil of one of the leaves, sometimes nearly a foot long, 

 clothed with delicate, white Jlowers, spotted with purple, 

 forming a dense, cylindrical mass around the rachis. 

 Calyx with the upper sepal oval, the two lateral ones 

 broadly, almost rotundato-ovate. Lip ovato-oblong, suba- 

 cuminate, furnished at the base with a hollow, cylindrical, 

 saccate, blunt spur or pouch. Column short. Pollen- 

 mjasses with a long, tapering caudicula, and a small 

 gland at its base. 



Fig. 1. Front view of a Flower. 2. Side view of the Column and Lip* 

 3. Pollen-masses : — magnified. 



