96 BULBOPHYLLUM. 



Bulbophylluni Dearei, supra* 

 A beautiful species, in cultivation at Burford Lodge, of which 

 we have failed to find any published description, or any authority 

 for the name which is unquestionably that of the gallant officer 

 who introduced Dendrobium Dearei, and thence the plant may be 

 assumed to be of Philippine origin. The structure of the flower 

 is as curious as the flower itself is beautiful; this is especially seen 

 in the labellum, with its curious U-shaped crest. This remarkable 

 organ is so delicately poised upon its flexible claw, that it vibrates 

 rapidly upon the slightest movement imparted to the plant. 



B. lemniscatum. 



"Pseudo-bulbs J — f inch in diameter. Leaves 1| — 2 inches long, in 

 a tuft of three or four from base of pseudo-bulb, ellipticdanceolate, 

 deciduous. Scapes slender, 4 — 6 inches high, with two or three short 

 sheaths below the middle, and one long, slightly inflated one, above it. 

 Flowers small, crowded on a pendulous spike at the extremity of the 

 scape ; sepals orbicular-ovate, dark purple, setose, with long spreading 

 hairs and with an appendage at the base ; petals linear-lanceolate, white 

 with a purple streak ; lip broadly ovate, recurved, convex, dark blue- 

 purple." — Botanical 3Iagazine. 



Bulbophyllum lemniscatum, Parish, M.S. fide Hook. f. Bot. Mag. 1872, t. 5961. 

 Van Houtte's Fl. des Sevres, t. 2476 (copied from Bot. Mag.). 



Sir J. D. Hooker remarks of this : — 



"That a more singular little gem of an orchid cannot well be 

 imagined. Its curious, glossy, tubercled pseudo-bulbs, its capillary 

 scape, its pendulous spike of glistening minute flowers, and, above all, 

 its slender appendages that hang one from the back of each sepal, 

 and which are as curious in structure as beautiful in colouring, together 

 seem to mark it as the type of a new genus. . . . The elaborate 

 structure of the appendages of the sepals deserves special notice. Each 

 consists of a narrow club-shaped, very flaccid body, three to four times 

 as long as the flower, and is gradually narrowed into a filiform pedicel. 

 On superficial examination it appears to be ten-sided, but on a trans- 

 verse section is proved to consist of a capillary axis from which radiate 

 ten longitudinal, crenate, undulate plates of extreme delicacy. The 

 whole organ is not more than one-sixth to one-fourth of an inch long, 

 of a brilliant red-purple colour, transversely banded with white. Of its 

 possible use I can form no conception ; it falls off as the flower 

 expands." 



This curious orchid was discovered by the Rev. C. Parish, in 

 1868, growing on an old shingle roof at Zwakabin, in Moulmein. 



* It was exhibited by Sir Trevor Lawrence, Bart., under this Dame, at the Orchid Conference 

 held at South Kensington in May, 1885. 



