CATTLEYA HAERISONI^ VIOLACEA. 



[Plate 333.J 



J^ative of Brazil. 



Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs slender, erect, . cylindrical, tapering below, when young 

 clothed with large membraneous sheaths, becoming naked and wrinkled with age, from 

 one to two feet in height, bearing upon the apex a pair of elliptic- oblong leaves, 

 which are from four to six inches long, thick and fleshy in texture, and deep 

 green. ScajDe erect, rising from between a large foliaceous sheath, bearing from 

 three to five flowers. Floivers thick and fleshy in texture, and upwards of four 

 inches across ; sepals oblong, the lateral ones subfalcate ; petals somewliat obovate, 

 waved at the edge, and like the sepals of a uniform rich rosy purple ; lip rolled 

 over the column at the base, with the front edge reflexed from porti«m spreading, 

 crisp and serrulate on the margin, of a beautiful rich rosy purple, the disc being 

 yellow, and traversed with several raised yellow lines. Column broad, triquete. 



Cattleya Harrisonle, Bateman, Paxton's Magazine of Botany, iv.,* p. 247; 

 Lindley, Botanical Register, t, 1919; Annales de Gand, ]845, t 5. 



Cattleya Harrisoni.e violacea, Hort. ; Williams* Orchid Grower's Manual, 6 

 ed., p. 135. 



* 



Epidendrum Harrisonle Reiclienhach Jil, Xenia Orchidacea, ii, p. 31. 



Some years ago this plant was considered to be only a variety of Cattleya 

 Loddigesii, a very old species knoM^n to cultivation as far back as 1819, and 

 which was first figured in Loddiges' Botanical Cabinet, t. 337, as Epidendrum 

 violaceum^ before the genus Cattleya was founded by Lindley ; C. lahiata was the 

 species upon which the genus was first founded, but C. Loddigesii was -later on 

 included with it. Lindley thus speaks of it in his Collectanea Botanica: "At the 

 time we were first acquainted with this genus, the subject of the accompanying 

 plate ( C. Loddigesii) was the only species of which we had any information ; it even 

 then appeared' to be essentially distinct from Broughtonia, both in habit and 

 artificial characters. When at a subsequent period the rare Brazilian plant which 

 has been published at Plate 33 of this work ((7. laUata) was submitted to 

 examination, it obviously offered such striking generic resemblances to the first, 

 and at the same time so many beautiful specific difierences that we no longer 

 hesitated to establish upon the two a new genus, which was called Cattleya!' It 

 will thus be seen that although C. labiata was the first plant christened, C. 

 Loddigesii was previously known to cultivation. In the whole of the books 

 referred to above, C. Loddigesii is represented with spotted flowers; a few years 

 later a very fine variety of C. Loddigesii turned up without spotted flowers, in 



IS 



