BARKERIA ELEGANS. 
[PxLaTE 195. ] 
Native of Mexico. 
Epiphytal. Stems erect, leafy, clustered, terete, fusiform, narrowed to the base, 
and also upwards into the peduncle, sheathed by the leaf-bases. Leaves sub- 
distichous, remote, light green, oblong-lanceolate acute, with a sheathing base, deciduous. 
Peduneles terminal, being a tapered continuation of the young stems of the current 
growth, slender, blotched with purple, and having long sheathing green bracts, 
supporting a short raceme of three to five flowers of a showy character. Flowers 
two and a-half inches across, of a delicate blush rose, deeper on the outer surface, 
the lip bearing at the tip a large blotch of the richest purple-magenta; sepals 
lanceolate acute, spreading, blush-lilac inside, deeper rose outside; petals similar in 
colour, but broader and more ovate; lip large, broadly obovate, obtuse, mucronulate, 
nearly one and a-half inch long, the sides indented, white, covered along the centre 
in the lower part by the fleshy appressed column, which lies over an oblong 
callus ending in three elevated lines, and beyond which, on the exposed part, is a 
sub-quadrate blotch of the richest purple-magenta extending nearly to the apex, but 
having a distinct’ narrow border of white. Column petaloid, spathulate, bent down 
upon the lip, conspicuously dotted with crimson-purple, yellow at the tip. 
BARKERIA ELEGANS, Knowles and Westcott, Floral Cabinet, ii., t. 49; Botanical 
Magazine, t. 4784; Flore des Serres, t. 959; Illustration Horticole, t. 23; Pescatorea, 
t. 10; Floral Magazine, 2 ser., t. 394. 
This small genus of Orchids is now less frequently seen or grown than it should 
be, though we do, indeed, occasionally meet with one or other of the species at 
our floral meetings and exhibitions. As, however, we are now getting more considerable 
importations of them, it is to be hoped that they will the oftener make their 
appearance, both on the stage at home and abroad at the exhibitions, as they are 
amongst the finest of our cultivated Orchids. No doubt the reason why we have not 
very often seen them is because they are deciduous in habit, and on that account 
they often get so far forgotten as not to be attended to at the proper time; but 
where due attention is bestowed upon them they will repay all the trouble that is 
taken with them. 
The species which we now figure is one of the most beautiful, and one which 
we flowered successfully many years ago. Other growers were also more fortunate 
with these plants in those days than they are now; but, of course, there are now 
so many additional species of Orchids cultivated, that attention is rather drawn 
away from these. We, however, hope that by introducing illustrations of them to 
