DENDROBIUM CRASSINODE. 
([Prate 152. ] 
Native of Arracan, Burmah, Siam, ete. 
Epiphytal. Stems numerous, tufted, erect or ascending, four to ten inches high, 
slender at the base, thickened _upwards, nodose, the nodes or joints covered on the 
upper half with a scarious appressed scale, somewhat crowded and swollen so as to 
become depressed-spherical, fully twice the thickness of the contracted internodes, 
and slightly grooved. Leaves ligulate acute, sheathing at the base, deciduous, falling 
away from the ripened shoots before the development of the flowers, leaving the 
swollen joints bare. Flowers about three inches across, very handsome, on two- 
flowered peduncles, furnished with oblong sheathing scarious bracts, issuing from just 
above the nodes; sepals oblong subacute, heavily tipped with soft mauve, the lower 
two-thirds white; petals rather broader, otherwise similar both in form and colouring ; 
lip concave roundish-ovate, shortly clawed, the surface covered with fine velvety 
down, the edge minutely erose and ciliolate, furnished at the base with a deep 
yellow blotch three-fourths of an inch wide, exterior to which is a band of white, 
narrowing off towards the back, the front border being a soft mauve; spur or 
mentum very short and blunt. Column short, greenish white, with purple margins. 
ENDROBIUM CRASSINODE, Benson & Reichenbach fil., in Gardeners’ Chronicle 
1869, 164; Hooker, Botanical Magazine, t. 5766. 
In this remarkable genus there are many fine species and our present plate 
illustrates one of the most useful and beautiful of them. Moreover, the importations 
that have been brought home during the past few years bring it within the reach of 
everyone who has an inclination to grow it. A few years ago it was very scarce, 
and cost guineas where now it costs only shillings. It is free-growing as well as 
free-blooming ; a flower may be plucked and placed with a small Fern frond, and 
a button-hole bouquet is formed at once. It may be grown in a small space suspended 
from the roof, which is a situation in which it delights. Our drawing was taken 
from a specimen in the wonderful collection of J. T. Peacock, Esq., Sudbury House, 
Hammersmith, where thousands of Orchidaceous plants are grown and well grown 
too. 
Dendrobium crassinode is a native of Burmah and other parts of India, and is 
a deciduous species, loosing its leaves after the growth of the stems is completed. 
It grows from one to two feet in height, and has large swollen or knotted joints 
or nodes, from which it takes its name, which means thick-jointed. The sepals 
and petals are white, heavily tipped with rosy purple, the lip is also white, tipped 
with rosy purple, and having a large blotch of yellow in the throat. It blooms 
in March and April, and continues two or three weeks in perfection. 
