SEPTEMBER, 1916.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 217 
eel 
. remarkable epiphyte, long known to residents in Malaya as the 
Scorpion Orchid, has flowered at Kew on several occasions, and only 
a few weeks ago bore a fine raceme of its quaint flowers. The accom- 
panying illustration represents an inflorescence which appeared in the 
collection of Hugh Dixon, Esq., of Sydney, N.S.W., and represents the 
flowers one-fourth natural size. The colour of the flowers is. greenish 
yellow, w.th large red-brown blotches, and the inflorescence is sometimes 
branched and bears as many as fifteen flowers. The plant has a climbing 
stem, and grows from four or five up to several feet high. The species has 
A ARACHNIS FLOS-AERIS. 
Fig. 39. ARACHNIS FLos-AERIs. 
been known for upwards of a couple of centuries, having been figured by 
Kempfer as long ago as 1712, under the name of Kunong ging, with the 
information that it was a native of Java, and bore the name of Scorpion 
flower. Linnzeus, who placed all the tropical Orchids then known in his 
genus Epidendrum, and whose knowledge of it was based on Kempfer’s 
figfre, called it Epidendrum Flos-aeris, whence it was transferred by 
Swartz successively to Limodorum and Aérides, while Blume, who in 1825 
worked out the Orchids of Java, formed the genus Arachnis for its recep- 
tion, but he unfortunately changed the specific name to moschifera, on 
account of its musk-like fragrance. Later on he modified the generic name 
to Arachnanthe, both changes being inadmissible, as Reichenback pointed 
