ODONTOGLOSSUM MULUS HOLFORDIANUM. 
[PLate 429.] 
Native of the United States of Colombia. 
Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs clustered, ovate, stout and compressed, attaining some 
three or four inches in height, dark green, smooth when young, becoming more or less 
furrowed with age, and bearing on the apex a pair of ensiform acute deep green leaves, 
the accessory basal leaves, although these die quite away, are less fugacious than in 
many of the species and varieties of this genus. Scape erect, issuing from the side of the 
pseudobulb at its base, arching, reaching sometimes to three feet in. length, terminating 
in a dense raceme of large and very showy flowers; these are spreading, some four 
inches across. Sepals and petals nearly equal, oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, waved 
and undulated, but not toothed; ground colour light yellow, profusely blotched with 
large irregular-shaped spots of brown, tinged with purple; dip somewhat panduriform, 
coarsely dentate on the margin, cuspidate, bearing a toothed crest, light yellow, bearing 
two large spots of purplish brown in front of the crest, and numerous smaller ones 
_ seattered over the surface. Column bent, with a pair of smaller toothed wings. 
OponToetossuM MuLUS Ho.rorpranum, Reichb. fil, Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1882, y.s., 
xvill., p. 616. L’Orchidophile, 1885, p. 132. Williams’ Orchid-Grower’s Manual, 
G ed, fh 452. 
This plant is probably one of the various mule forms of Odontoglossum 
luteo-purpureum of Lindley, a species which was originally discovered by 
M. Linden, of Brussels, when travelling in New Grenada, nearly half-a-century 
ago; since that time the plant has been found to be widely distributed in that 
country, necessarily varying considerably in form and brilliancy of markings. 
Notwithstanding the fact that collectors had been in these cool regions and seen the 
plants. thriving under conditions so very different to those they were subjected 
to at home, nothing appears to have been said by them relative to this matter; 
_ this was the greatest drawback to the establishing of South American Orchids in our 
collections, and it was not until after the year 1850 that the observations of Warscewicz 
upon this very subject bore fruit, in an experiment which was carried out in the 
establishment of the late Messrs. Thomas Jackson and Son, at Kingston, in Surrey: who 
started a cool Orchid house, and many were the doubts and fears expressed for the 
plants therein through the first winter; but they came through well, and the 
example set soon became common in the land. It was the first cool house that 
ever existed in this country, and in it were saved and flowered many of the last 
discoveries of Warscewicz. The plant whose portrait we here have the pleasure 
to lay before our readers was grown in the fine collection of R. 8S. Holford, Esq., 
Weston Birt, Tetbury, under the care of Mr. Chapman, the able gardener. 
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