DENDROBIUM. 21 



pleasing colours. D. aureum has proved to be one of the most potent 

 of Dendrobes for hybridising, and has participated in the parentage 

 of most of the finest hybrids yet raised. The applicability of the 

 names aureum, "golden/' and heterocarpum, "various-fruited/' to this 

 species is by no means clear.* 



D. barbatulum. 



Eudendrobium — Galostacliyce. Stems 9 — 15 inches long, curved, swollen 



at the base, tapering at the apex. Leaves narrowly lanceolate, 3 — 4 



inches long, deciduous. Flowers 1^ inches in diameter, crowded in a 



lateral or pseudo-terminal raceme, pure white ; sepals lanceolate ; petals 



ovate-acute, sometimes as broad again as the sepals, but sometimes nearly 



equal to them ; lip with two small ascending acute lateral lobes, and a 



spreading obovate intermediate one, and with a small tuft of greenish 



yellow hairs at the base ; spur conical, greenish. 



Dendrobium barbatulum, Lindl. Gen. et Sp. Orch. 84 (1831). Bot. Mag. t. 5918. 

 D. Heyneanum, Hort. not Lindl. 



Discovered in the early part of the present century in the forests 



that cover the mountains in western and southern Hindostan, 



usually growing on bushes and small trees exposed to the sun 



during the dry season.f It has occasionally been confounded with 



other white -flowered Dendrobes, especially with Dendrobium Fytch- 



ianum, figured in the Botanical Magazine, t. 5444, as D. barbatulum, 



but which is a Moulmein species with orbicular petals and a totally 



different lip ; also with D. Heyneanum, a still nearer ally but a much 



smaller plant, with slender stems not more than 2 — 4 inches high, 



bearing linear leaves and few-flowered racemes of small flowers. 



D. Bensonise. 



Eudendrobium — Fasciculata. Stems cylindric, erect, 12 — 30 inches 



high, the larger ones as thick as the little finger. Leaves linear, 2 — 3 



inches long, deciduous. Flowers 2^ inches in diameter, in fascicles of 



twos and threes, but sometimes solitary from the uppermost joints, 



milk-white, with an orange-yellow disc on the lip, at the base of which 



are two maroon spots that are sometimes confluent ; sepals oblong ; 



petals much broader, elliptic-oblong ; lip orbicular, concave and downy 



above, with a short convolute claw and minutely toothed margin. 



Dendrobium Bensonite, Rchb. in Bot. Zeit. 1867, p. 230, fide Hemsley. Bot. Mag. 

 t. 5679 (1867). Fl. Mag. t. 355. Jennings' Orch. t. 32. 



* Many plants of Dendrobium aureum have fruited in our houses during the last few years, 

 but we have never observed any variability in the capsules, except in size ; a circum- 

 stance attributable to the condition of the stems that bore them. 



t Major-General E. S. Berkeley, M.S., to whom our best acknowledgments are due for this 

 and other notes on Dendrobiums observed in situ. 



