38 ORCHIDS 



A e ran thus. 

 cultivation. The name is from ircr, air, and aiitJios, a 

 flower, and is in allusion to the habit. 



A. Curnowianus {Rchb. /.). — This is a very distinct plant, 

 with yellowish-white tlowers ; sepals and petals ligulate, acute ; lip 

 cuneate-obovate, retuse ; spur filiform, five times as long as the 

 lip. The leaves are fleshy dull green, and rather rough. The 

 stem is dwarf. Madagascar, 18S3. 



A. Leonis {Rihb. /.). — The plant known by this name is 

 Airn-LTLiim Humblotii. 



AERIDES. 



An extensive genus of Orchids, of the tribe ]"andeic, 

 and founded by Loureiro. It is confined to the tropics of 

 the Old World, and includes many large and showy- 

 flowered species. They are all epiphytes, growing upon 

 the trees which overhang the ri\'ers and streams, and 

 forming in many instances strikingly^ beautiful objects. 

 The strap-shaped, recurved Iea\-es are arranged in two 

 regular rows, one facing the other. They are usually- 

 jagged or lobed at the apex, as if a piece had been cut 

 out or broken off ; in most of the species they are 

 channelled down the middle, but in a few kinds they are 

 linear or nearly^ cydindrical. All of them throw out large, 

 fleshy roots from various parts of their stems, by which 

 they absorb the moisture from the atmosphere. It is to 

 this aerial mode of growth, so to speak, that the genus 

 owes its name, which was bestowed upon it, towards the 

 end of the last century, by a Catholic missionary in Cochin 

 China, to whom we are greatly indebted for our knowledge 

 of the vegetation of that region. He found there the plant 

 which he named Aerides odoratiiui, and of which we shall 

 speak hereafter. This plant, he tells us in his original 

 description, published in 1790, has this wonderful prop'erty, 

 that, when brought from the Avoods \\-here it gro«-s into a 

 house, and suspended in the air, it will grow, "flourish, and 

 flower for many years without any nourishment, either from 

 the earth or from water. " I would scarcely have believed 

 this," he adds, " had I not had daily experience of it." The 

 name Flos Aeris, or Air Flower, had, however, previously 

 been applied to certain other epiphytic Orchids. The 

 white, fleshy roots, by which the cases of Acridcs clino- to 



