PHALANOPSIS MARIA. 
[PLatE 80. ] 
Native of the Eastern Archipelago. 
Epiphytal. Plant stemless, with flat aérial clinging roots. Leaves deflexed, distichous, 
oblong or ligulate, acute, somewhat channelled, two inches or more in width, stoutish in 
texture, dark green, glossy, obscurely striate. Scape radical, bearing a many-flowered 
drooping raceme, shorter than the leaves, and proceeding from their axils. Flowers of 
medium size, elegantly coloured ;. sepals narrowly-oblong, bluntish, about an inch long, 
the lateral ones slightly falcate, white, with about six bold transverse bars or blotches 
of a deep chocolate red, the basal spots magenta-coloured like the lip; petals shorter, 
broader and more obovate, marked in a similar manner, but with fewer blotches, the 
colour being the same as in the sepals; lip obovate oblong, apiculate, convex, somewhat 
constricted at the sides, of a rich deep magenta-rose, the middle lobe plane not pilose. 
Column short, white, without fringes at the apex. 
Puatanopsis Marte, Reichenbach fil. MS. 
In this little Moth Orchid we have a very pretty novelty, for the opportunity of 
figuring, which we have to acknowledge our indebtedness to the Messrs. Veitch and 
Sons, of Chelsea, for whom the plant was collected by Mr. F. W. Burbidge, now 
the energetic Curator of the Trinity College Botanic Gardens, Dublin. Mr. Burbidge 
has been good enough to inform us that the plant was found in a totally new 
habitat, at an elevation of 2,000 feet above the sea level. Only four plants were 
originally found, although a large sum was offered for specimens of it to the natives, 
m whose language it is known as the Rain-flower, on account of its opening its 
first blossoms at the commencement of the wet monsoon. Mr. Burbidge adds that 
It was discovered by him “when travelling in the Eastern Archipelago for the Messrs. 
Veitch, and that it has been named by Professor Reichenbach in compliment to 
: Burbidge, : ; 
“At first sight the plant both in its habit of growth, and in its blossoms, is 
Suggestive of Phalenopsis sumatrana, especially the beautiful variety of that species 
own as lilacina, but in P. Marie, there is no brush-like apical lobe to the lip, 
nor is. the apex of the column fringed as in that species. The bold amethyst-coloured 
blotches on the snow-white sepa. and petals are very lovely, and, although the 
| TS are not so large as those of some others of its congeners, it affords, never- 
theless, another illustration of the pleasing beauty of mountain flowers. Tt has a 
‘ingularly hardy constitution, and so bears the vicissitudes of transit better than 
Many of its allies.” | 
