188 
GLEANINGS AND ORIGINAL MEMORANDA. 
They are very useful autumn plants, are quite hardy, but worth a greenhouse, in which, in England, they are seen to 
We have one before us from Prof. De Vriese, with a 
most advantage. 
The specimen figured is a very small one. 
An Indian 
branched inflorescence, and eight flowers open at once. 
244. Qrkitharium striatulum. {alias Ornithochilus striatulus Hort. Calcutt.) 
epiphytal Orchid of little beauty. Flowers yellow with a white lip. (Fig. 117.) 
Oumtharium. Caulescens, foliis distichis. Flores spicati, resupinati, clausi, carnosi. Sepala lateralia basi ima 
connata, cum labello parallela, dorsale paulo sejunctum. Petala conformia. Labellum liberum, unguiculatum, 
• camosura, a basi sagittata cuniculatum. Columna semiteres, brevis, stigmate verticali. Pollinia 2, solida, caudicula obovata, 
glandula triangularis rostello reflexo. 
O. striatulum. Sepala et Petala obtusa, carnosa, lutea, maculis quibusdam interius. Labellum spongiosum, candidum, 
oblongum, rugosum, minutissime scabrum, apice appendice sphserico cavo atropurpureo auctum, intra cuniculum lseve. 
Of this curious little plant, which flowered last October with W. F. G. Farmer, Esq., of Nonsuch Park, we have only 
seen a few flowers. They were about as large as those of the Egerton Odontoglot, arranged along a slender narrow 
rachis. The petals and sepals were waxy-yellow, with a few bars of red inside. The lip was white with a few violet 
stains and a deep purple round knob at the end, giving the flower the appearance of concealing within it a tiny bird with 
a white body and purple head. Mr. Carson, the gardener at Nonsuch Park, gives us the following account of it : 
"The Ornithochilus striatulus came from India in the autumn of 1847, sent by Dr. M'Clelland of the Botanical 
Garden, Calcutta, and was so named and labelled in the invoice. In habit it has a resemblance to Camarotis atropurpurea 
in its slender stem, with an abundance of aerial roots, yet the leaves are much larger ; they are flat, fleshy, disposed in 
two opposite uniform rows, of a pale green colour, notched at the end, about five inches long by one and a half broad, 
and not unlike small leaves of Aerides odoratum. The plant is epiphytal, sending out at every joint its slightly 
tortuous tail-like flower spikes, some of which are above a foot in length. Although the plant is small, not more than 
six inches in height, it is remarkable that after one flower-spike has grown eight or ten inches, another pushes from the 
under side of it, so that it produces two spikes from the same point. I think it must prove an interesting plant in the 
Orchid-house from its very singular appearance." 
We have never seen this in any of the numerous Indian collections which have come into our possession, nor can we 
trace the name by which it was received. It is certainly no Ornithochilus, whether the plant so named by Dr. Wallich 
be retained as a distinct genus or merges in Aerides ; nor does it seem referable to any other published genus. From 
Arhynchium, Camarotis and the like, its simple pollen masses and unguiculate lip clearly separate it. It can be no Micropera, 
because of its unguiculate lip, short rostel, &c. ; nor do we find among the species referred to Saccolabium anything that 
approaches it at all nearly. In the following cut, a represents a flower seen in front ; and b the same from the side, both 
magnified ; c is the lip and column deprived of the sepals and petals ; d is the lip only seen from above ; e the column ; 
and / the pollen-apparatus. 
/ 
117 
d 
245. Astrap^a viscosa. Sweet, (alias Dombeya Amelise Guittemin.) A soft sticky-leaved 
stove plant, with clusters of white and pink flowers. Belongs to Byttneriads. Native of Madagascar. 
Introduced in 1823. (Kg. 118.) 
A noble plant or tree, thirty feet in height, as now seen in the great stove of the Royal Gardens of Kew, with a large 
rounded head of copious branches, and dense foliage, studded, in the spring months, with numerous snowball-like heads of 
flowers, each flower stained with a deep blood-coloured eye. The flowers have a honey-like smell. The young herbaceous 
branches and nascent leaves, accompanied by large, cordate, afterwards deciduous stipules, are exceedingly viscid. Leaves 
on long stalks, the largest a span and more long, heart-shaped, roundish, five-angled (the smaller ones three-angled), the 
angles or lobes acuminate, the margins serrated. The young flower-head is clothed by large deciduous bracteas, and at the 
base of the head three or four such bracteas form an imperfect involucre. These bracteas disappear on the full expansion 
of the many flowers into a globose head, four inches and more in diameter. Sepals ovate, acuminate, hairy externally. 
Petals five, twisted broad- wedge-shaped, pure white, the base deeply dyed with crimson. Staminal tube urceolate, bearing 
