CYCNOCHES. 215 



CYCNOCHES, Lindley. 

 (Tribe Vandeae, suhtrihe Stanhopieae.) 

 A very singular genus of plants, whose flowers are of a most peculiar 

 form, usually bearing more or less resemblance to the Swan. They are 

 not thought much of by many cultivators of Orchids, but some . are well 

 worth growing, as they are of easy culture, and produce their flowers 

 freely. The stems, which are thick and fleshy, are from 6 to 10 

 inches high, and have three or four large plicato-venose leaves with a 

 sheathing base, which, being deciduous, are lost as soon as they have 

 finished their growth. The large peculiar-shaped flowers are produced 

 in erect or nodding racemes from the base of the pseudobulbs ; they 

 have spreading sepals and petals, a fleshy lip contracted at the base, 

 and a very long slender arcuate column, which is somewhat thickened 

 at the apex. Some eight or ten species of Tropical America are known. 



Culture. — They are best grown at the coolest end of the East Indian 

 house, in pots, with rough fibrous peat and good drainage, and should 

 have a liberal supply of water at the roots in their growing season ; 

 afterwards they may be kept much cooler, and should be placed near 

 the glass, to receive all the light possible. They are very impatient of 

 moisture during their season of rest, being speedily destroyed if at all 

 over-watered. When they begin to grow they must be moved back 

 into heat. They are propagated by dividing the pseudobulbs when 

 they begin to start. 



C. AUREUM, Lindley. — A very attractive and noble species, known to 

 many by the name of the Golden Swan Orchid. The flowers are closely set 

 in a long drooping raceme, and are rather large, with lanceolate flat sepals, 

 petals of similar form, but rolled back from the tip, and a small short-stalked 

 lip with a roundish disk, the edge of which is broken up into short curved 

 processes, forked at the point, the two lower ones larger and distinct. It will 

 succeed well under the treatment recommended above. — Central America. 



Fig,.— Paxt. Ft. Gard., iji. t. 75 ; Zem. Jai-d: Fl., t. 264. 



C. BARBATUM, Lindley. — A singular and curious plant which appears to 

 connect Gycnoches with Oongora. It has ovate compressed pseudobulbs 1| inch 

 long, solitary elliptic oblong plicate leaves, and radical, dark purple scapes a 

 foot long, terminating in a drooping raceme of equal length, bearing many 

 (50 — 80 fide Rchb.) narrow-petalled but large and handsomely spotted flowers, 

 of an orange-yellow dotted with dark purple, the lip white tinged with yellow, 

 and spotted with blood-red, formed of two portions, the hypochil or basal part 



