CYCNOCHES. 



141 



zeitung. About the same time it was imported from Demerara by- 

 Messrs. Loddiges, in whose nursery it flowered for the first time in 

 England^ and on which occasion the excellent figure in Lindley's 

 Sertum Orchidaceum was drawn. 



Gycnoclies clilorochilon is the best known species of the genus in 

 cultivation, irs large fragrant flowers securing for it a place in many 

 orchid collections. But although it has been in European gardens 

 for more than half a century, the appearance of female flowers 

 does not seem to have been recorded or even observed till quite 

 recently. In July, 1891, M. Houzeau de Lehaie, of Hyon, near 

 Mens, sent to Kew a male and a female flower gathered from 

 distinct plants that had been received from Caracas, the Venezuelian 

 habitat of the species ; the diSerence between the two forms is thus 

 pointed out by Mr. Rolfe : — 



" The male is the form so long known in gardens with slender 

 column and pollinia normally developed ; the female is distinctly larger 

 and more fleshy than the male and with broader sepals and petals ; 

 the ovary is more than twice as thick as the pedicel of the male flower 

 and more strongly grooved ; the column is scarcely half as long, but it 

 is at least four times as thick ; there are, of course, no pollinia but a 

 well-developed stigma with a pair of large fleshy incurved wings on 

 either side. The colour of the flowers is identical in the two sexes."* 



0. Egertonianum. 



Male flowers : Racemes pendulous, 12 — 15 inches long, many-flowered. 

 Flowers about 1|^ inch in diameter ; sepals and petals lanceolate, acute, 

 the petals a little broader than the sepals, lurid purple, greenish at 

 the back ; lip with a narrow excavated claw and circular blade broken 

 up into about ten clavate purple processes and two longer and broader 

 green ones that are nearly parallel with each other. Column very 

 slender, purple ; anther green. Female floivers : Solitary or in pairs 

 on a short, sub-erect raceme, dull olive-green, rather larger and more 

 fleshy, but otherwise similar to the male flowers except in the lip 

 which is cordate acute, entire, and in the sexual organs. 



Cycnoches Egertonianum, Batem. Orch. Mex, et Guat. sub. t. 40 (1843), in part. 



Lindl. Bot. Reg. 1843, misc. p. 77, with fig. Rolfe in Gard. Chron. XI. s. 3 (1892), 



p. 204. 



The earliest authentic notice of this curious species being in cultivation 

 occurs in the miscellaneous matter of the Botanical Register of 1813, 

 where a figure of a raceme with both male and female flowers — an 

 extremely rare occurrence in Cycnoches — is given. The plant that 

 produced it was in the collection of the late Mr. R. S. Holford, 

 * Gard. Chrou. X. s. 3 (1891), p. 69. 



