I 



ONcmiTJM. 59 



Scapes flexuose, scandent, 7 — 10 or more feet long, panicled, the 

 branches short, distant and few flowered. Bracts boat-shaped, f inch 

 long. Flowers the largest in the genus, sometimes 4 inches in diameter ; 

 sepals clawed, orbicular-oblong, undulate, yellow toned with light brown ; 

 petals similar to the sepals but with a shorter claw and more undulate ; 

 lip much smaller than the other segments, hastate, the two lateral 

 lobes horn-like, violet-purple at the base ; the intermediate lobe tongue- 

 shaped, attenuated to a reflexed tip, white bordered with violet-purple ; 

 crest cylindric with three larger violet-purple teeth in front and three 

 smaller white ones behind. Column wings hatchet-shaped, brownish 

 purple. 



Oncidium macranthum, Lindl. Gen. et Sp. Orch. p. 205 (1832). Id. Fol. Orch. 

 Oncid. No. 1. Id. in Paxt. Fl. Gard. II. p. 126. Bot. Mag. t. 5743. Fl. Mag. 1868, 

 t. 386. Warner's Sel. Orch. II. t. 17. Jennings' Orch. t. 42 (1875). Gard. Chron. 

 1869, p. 739, with fig. Rchb. in Gard. Chron. XIV. (1880), p. 8 (Williamsianum). 

 The Garden, XXIV. (1883), pi. 416. Sander's Eeichenbachia, II. t. 64. Lindenia, 

 IV. t. 152. 



The earliest evidence of the existence of this superb Oncidium was 



a single flower in the herbarium of the Spanish botanists Euiz and 



Pavon, which was acquired by Mr. A. B. Lambert, the author of 



The Genus Pinus, and now in the Natural History Museum at 



South Kensington. This flower was probably gathered about the 



year 1780, the locality given being Guayaquil, in Ecuador, but as 



this town is a port on the estuary of the River Palenque and 



situated near the arid coast, the specimen must have been obtained 



from the neighbouring Cordillera. A long interval elapsed before 



it again came under the cognisance of science, the first to rediscover 



the species being Matthews, who gathered it in 1838 at Tunguragua, 



on the Eastern Cordillera of Ecuador, at 10,000 feet elevation. It 



was next gathered by Hartweg near Alausi, by Professor Jamieson 



of Quito, near Calicali, and by Spruce at Llala and also in Matthews' 



locality, but none of these botanical collectors sent living plants to 



Europe. The first notice of it as a horticultural plant occurs in 



the horticultural journals of 1868, in the spring of which year it 



flowered for the first time in this country in the collection of Lord 



Londesborough at Norbiton, and shortly afterwards at Farnham Castle, 



and in our Chelsea nursery. No indication is given of the origin 



of these plants, which were doubtless all imported at the same 



time. 



Oncidium macranthum is now well known as a magnificent species 



of easy culture, one plant of which when in flower *' is enough to 



ornament a house of considerable dimensions/' 



