ONCIDIUM MACRANTHUM. 
[PLATE 485. ] 
Native of Tunguragua, Eastern Cordillera of Ecuador. 
_ Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs ovate, smooth when young, becoming wrinkled with age, 
and bearing a pair of oblong, acute leaves, a foot or eighteen inches long, and light 
green in colour. The scape, which issues from the side of the pseudobulb near its 
base, assumes a scandent habit, its length depending upon the strength of the plant 
which bears it, the individual flowers being in some instances nearly four inches. 
across. lowers of a bright clear yellow, but in many varieties the sepals have a 
tinge of tawny brown; sepals and petals cordate, oblong in shape, rounded, obtuse, 
clawed, and undulated; dip small, as in all the section (Microchila) to which this 
species belongs, hastate, purple at the base, yellow at the tip, and furnished with 
a large crest of white. 
OncIpIUM MacrantHuM, Lindley, Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants, 
p. 205. Lbid, Folia Orchidacea (Art. Oncidium), i. Ibid in Paxton’s Flower Garden, 
i, p. 126; Botanical Magazine, t. 5743. Warner's Select Orchidaceous Plants, iL, 
t. 17, Reichenbachia, ii, t. 4.  Lindenia, iv., t. 52. Floral Magazine, 1868, 
t. 386. Williams’ Orchid Grower's Manual, 6th ed., p. 490, woodeut 491. 
This is a plant which has been known to science considerably over a century, 
from the single flower which was acquired from the collection of Ruiz and Pavon, 
but we knew simply nothing of the species from a horticultural point of view until 
the year 1868, when it was brought to light by Mr. Denning, then gardener to 
Lord Londesborough, of Grimstone Park, near Tadcaster, who exhibited it before the 
Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society at South Kensington, the massive- 
flowered plant being most deservedly awarded a First Class Certificate. It was 
soon afterwards bloomed by several other patrons. It is a plant which we have 
found to-be somewhat variable in the size and colour of its flowers, although this 
is nothing more than might be expected from seedling plants. The flowers are 
round and massive, but they differ from the majority of the species of this large 
family in being dependent for their beauty upon their sepals and petals only, and 
not upon that organ known as the lip, to which the species of this genus 
generally owe their charms. In some varieties the sepals are tinted with a shade 
of olive-brown; in the form here figured the flower is destitute of that somewhat 
sombre tint, and shines out in all the splendour of rich golden yellow. This 
plant flowered in our own collection in the Victoria and Paradise Nurseries, and 
represents an ordinary variety of this most desirable Orchid, which should be in 
every collection, being doubly valuable on account of the long lasting property of 
its flowers as well as its great beauty. 
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