Plate 136. 



1 



LiELIA GKANDIS 



Large-fiowered Lmlia 



Plate 



>*ix 



Lj:lia grancUs : caule clavato monopliyllo, folio coriaceo, pedunculo bifloro basi spatliaceo longiorej 

 floribus subliorlzoutalibusj sepalis lanceolatis reflexis, petalis late lanceolatis crispis convexis, 

 labello membranaceo venose nu(3o undulato triloboj laciiiiis laterallbus circa columuam couvo- 



lutis et multo longioribus. LindL 



liELU. 



Mag 



This fine Lcelia first made its appearance in the establishment of M. Morel, of 

 Paris, where it flowered in the spring of 1850. In the year following it was exhibited 

 at one of the great London shows, but from that time it would seem to have entirely 

 disappeared from our collections, until its reintroduction in 1864 by Messrs. Hugh Low 

 and Co., of the Clapton Nursery, who received a few plants of it from their collector at 

 Bahia. From the same locality and about the same time, specimens were sen 

 Mr. Williams to the Royal Gardens at Kew, where one of them flowered finely in th 



of 1865, w^hen it was drawn by Mr. Fitch for this work, in which 



first 



coloured representation of the plant is now presented. Some slight discrepancies may 

 be observed between Mr. Fitch's drawing and the woodcut in ' Paxton's Magazine,' btit 

 these are readily accounted for by the circumstance that the fonner was made from 

 fresh flowers, while the latter was taken from specimens that had probably suffered in 



th 



?ir transmission to this country 

 In its habit and the general aspect of its flowers X. grandis is undistinguishable 

 from the Cattleyas, to which— but for its eight pollen-masses— it would at once be 

 referred. And even the latter structural distinction cannot be implicitly relied upon, 

 for I have examined specimens of so-called Lselias in which all but two pairs of polleu- 

 masses were merely rudimentary. The circumstance of species of the two supi-scd 

 genera breeding freely together-as has been proved by Mr. Dominy s expenmcnts 

 ^nother fact pointing in the same direction, and goes far to justify Professor ReicLcn 

 bach's opinion that they ought not any longer to be kept apart, except for the come 



