Addisonia 41 



(Plate 213) 



ERIA GIGANTEA 

 Gigantic Eria 



Native of the Philippine Islands 

 Family Orchidaceas Orchid Family 



Eria gigantea Ames, Orchidaceae 2: 192. 1905. 



Among orchids gathered on Mt. Mariveles, Luzon, in 1905, this 

 caulescent Eria was found and proved to be a new species related 

 to Eria major Ridl. and E. tricuspidata Rolfe, of the section Eriurae. 

 The type, which was gathered alive, was deposited in the New 

 York Botanical Garden in September, 1907, and from flowers 

 produced by it in February, 1919, our plate was prepared. The 

 earliest record of the species is based on dried specimens gathered 

 on Mt. Mariveles in 1904, by D. LeRoy Topping. 



As botanical explorations of the Philippines progressed, the 

 range of Eria gigantea was found to include Mindanao, where it 

 ascends to an altitude of four thousand feet. In its native haunts 

 it blooms from March to July. Under cultivation it has bloomed 

 in February, March, July, August and September, the first flowers 

 having opened in this country in early July, 1905, when the species 

 was originally described. 



Although Eria gigantea is by no stretch of the imagination a 

 candidate for horticultural prominence, the flowers are extra- 

 ordinarily beautiful objects when viewed on a white field, in strong 

 light, under the dissecting microscope. It is, however, a noteworthy 

 plant, horticulturally, because of its ready adaptability to culti- 

 vation. Among plants propagated from the type at the New York 

 Botanical Garden, there is a vigorous specimen in the Botanic 

 Garden of Harvard University that produced five or six flowering 

 shoots in August, 1921, sixteen years after the original plant was 

 introduced from the Philippines. 



The gigantic eria is an upright herb of vigorous habit, the leafy 

 stems that suggest cornstalks attaining a length of three or more 

 feet and forming large clumps either on trees or on the ground. 

 The leaves are about one foot long and an inch or more wide, of 

 leathery texture, oblong-lanceolate in outline, channeled at the 

 base, bilobed at the tip, one lobe much exceeding the other, the 

 leaf-bases or sheaths alternating, equitant, distichous, concealing 

 the stems, persistent, at length becoming fibrous on defoliated 



