VANDA HOOKERIANA. 
[PLate 73. ] 
Native of Borneo. 
Epiphytal. Stems elongate, rigid, terete, pale green, producing aérial roots from 
the joints, resembling in habit and character those of its near ally, Vanda te 
Leaves erect, terete, tapered to a subulate mucronate point, channelled on the upper 
side, two and a half to three inches long, of a: pale green colour. Peduncles from 
near the top of the stem, opposite, and longer than the leaves, erect, bearing a two 
to five-flowered raceme (two-flowered in the examples bloomed in this country). 
Flowers large, two and a half inches in diameter, and extremely beautiful, white, 
heavily striped and venosely dotted with deep rich magenta; dorsal sepal obovate, 
cuneate, wavy, projected forwards, white, tinted with rose; the lateral sepals similar 
in form, but larger, apiculate, white; petals spathulate oblong, obtuse, undulately- 
crisped, standing right and left above the column and lip, white, spotted with 
magenta; lip with a pair of large triangular entire auricles standing erect, one on 
each side the column, of a deep purple colour, mottled with a paler hue, the front 
portion expanding from a cuneate base into a very broad transverse trifid limb, two 
inches broad, which is concave, the lower edge being projected forwards, the lateral 
lobes oblong obtuse, the central one shorter, bluntly ovate, crenate, undulate, white, 
the disk marked longitudinally with bold rich magenta-purple lines, from which 
diverge in the direction of the lateral lobes several parallel stripes of a similar 
colour, the front part of these lobes, as well as the front lobe itself, marked with 
dots of rich magenta-purple ranged in lines. Spwr small, acute, with two blunt 
ealli in front of its mouth. Column hairy below, white, tipped with purple. 
__ Vanpa Hooxertana, Reichenbach fil., in Bonplandia, iv., 324; Id. Gardeners’ 
Chronicle, w.s., xviii, 488. Moore, Florist and Pomologist, 1882, 155. 
_ This lovely plant, which was unanimously awarded a First Class Certificate by 
the Floral Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, when shown for the first 
time in this country in September last, appears to have been’ originally discovered 
by Lobb, at Labuan, being represented by No. 347 of his Collection; and from 
Lobb’s specimen in the Hookerian Herbarium, it was named by Professor Reichenbach, 
in compliment to Sir William Jackson Hooker, and published amongst other Orchid 
notes and descriptions in the volume of the Bonplandia issued in 1856; 80 that, despite 
“ome well-merited laudatory remarks, such as “ planta admirabilis ee 
and“ plantam insignem spectabilem,” it has been long in finding its way to our 
Orchid collections, which it appears to have done in the summer of 1873, according 
to Reichenbach, who adds, “I believe all went direct to Sir N. de Rothschild, Bart.., 
and the plants one afterwards saw at other places were all presents from Tring 
H 
