THRIXSPERMUM UNGUICULATUM. 
[PLATE 266. | 
Native of the Philippine Islands and Burmah. 
Epiphytal. Stem short, adhering to its support by coarse fleshy roots, and 
producing a small tuft of distichous leaves from the crown. Leaves ligulate-oblong, 
six to eight inches long, unequally and bluntly bilobed at the apex, equitant and stem- 
clasping at the base, coriaceous, dark green and channelled above, paler beneath. 
Scapes lateral, protruding through the leaf-base, terete below, with distinet appressed 
carinate bracts, the upper portion flattened and _ floriferous, deep purplish red, the 
green pedicels springing from the axils of small acute bracts. Flowers crowded, 
three to four or more in a raceme, expanded, fleshy in texture, about two and a 
inches across, ivory-white, with a prettily marked lip; sepals oblong-lanceolate acute, 
spreading, one and a quarter inch long, white; petals spreading, resembling the 
sepals both in size and form and also in colour; Jip unguiculate, three-lobed, the 
unguis or claw linear convex with a line ploughed out along the centre, the lamina 
hollow, with the lateral lobes semi-ovate otis incurved, white, marked with 
longitudinal crimson stri, the central lobe fleshy, three-nerved above, rounded below, 
with the apex papilleform, straw colour, dotted transversely with crimson. Column 
short, erect, semi-terete, produced at the base. 
THRIXSPERMUM uNGUIcULATUM, Reichenbach fil., Xenia Orchidacea, ii., 122. 
__ Sarcocnitus uneurcutatus, Lindley, Botanical Register, 1840, misc. 143; 
Reichenbach fil., in Walpers’ Annales Botanices Systematice, vi., 501 
PHatanopsis Ruckertana, of gardens. 
This genus is but little known to Orchid cultivators, most of the species being 
referred to Sarcochilus by old authors. Our present illustration was taken from a 
plant which flowered in the Victoria and Paradise Nurseries, and which was sent 
home to us from Burmah as a supposed new Phalenopsis ; its growth, indeed, 
very much resembles that of a Phalenopsis, but one could hardly be mistaken 
as to its identity upon seeing the flowers. | 
The leaves of this plant are from six to nine inches long, by about two 
inches broad, of a bright green above and pale green below, and they are produced 
exactly in the same way as those of « Phalaenopsis. The flower spikes issue 
from the side of the stem amongst the lower leaves, and take a downward turn, 
the blossoms being produced close together on the apical portion of the rachis, _— 
is somewhat thickened and flattened out. The sepals and petals are pure ivory-white, 
and thick in texture, the lip being still more fleshy, white, barred | with apn 
crimson. The flowers are developed during the summer months, but they 
only a very short time in perfection. | 
