252 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [AuGust, 1915, 
Ea a 
HIS interesting old plant has been rather pushed into the background 
by showy species of later introduction, and it was interesting to see a 
fine example at the R.H.S. meeting held on July zoth. It was from the 
collection of J. Gurney Fowler, Esq., Brackenhurst, Pembury, and bore the 
name of Cymbidium aloifolium, but as it is not the original species of that 
name it may be interesting to give its history. 
The species was originally described and figured in 1795, by Roxburgh, 
under the name of Epidendrum pendulum (Pl. Coast Coromandel, i. p. 35; 
t. 44), with the record that it grew on trees on the Circar Mountains, and 
differed but little from Epidendrum aloifolium, L., a plant based on an old 
figure of Rheede (Hort. Malab., xii. p. 17, t. 8). When some four years 
later Swartz established the genus Cymbidium these two plants became 
Cymbidium pendulum and C. aloifolium respectively. So far no difficulty 
arises. In 1797, however, a plant had been figured in the Botanical 
Magazine (t. 387) under the name of Epidendrum aloides (a misprint for 
aloifolium, as the text shows), which was not the plant of Linnzus and of 
Rheede, but that of Roxburgh, and thus confusion began. The history 1s 
thus given by Curtis: “A few years since, my friend, Mr. Vere, of 
Kensington, received this plant from India, by the kindness of his friend, 
J. Devaynes, Esq: Placed in a pot of earth and plunged in the tan pit of 
the stove, it grew, increased, and now flourishes, but has not blown. With 
Messrs. Grimwood & Wykes, Nurserymen, Kensington, the plant has 
flowered this summer ; instead of plunging it in the tan, they set it on the 
flue of the stove, and to this variation in its treatment its flowering is, 
perhaps, to be attributed.” 
A year later Jacquin figured the same plant as Epidendrum aloifolium 
(Hort. Schenbr., iii. p. 69, t. 383), giving the Linnzan synonymy, and a few 
years later Loddiges figured it as Cymbidium aloifolium (Bot. Cab., t. 967), 
remarking : ‘We received this plant about the year 1790 from China, 
where several varieties of it are cultivated.” 
Blume evidently overlooked the earlier Cymbidium pendulum, for in 
1825 he described a second species under the same name (Bijdr., p- 379): 
this being a plant collected on Mt. Salak, Java, respecting which Lindley 
expressed a doubt (Gen. & Sp. Orch., p. 165) whether it was the plant of 
Roxburgh. But Lindley himself afterwards introduced a further complica- 
tion when he figured under the name of C. pendulum, Swartz, a plant 
which flowered in the collection of the Horticultural Society in 1838, which 
had been sent to Dean Herbert by Dr. Wallich (Bot. Reg., xxvi. t- 25) 
This was his own C. Finlaysonianum (Gen. & Sp. Orch., p. 164), based om 
CYMBIDIUM PENDULUM. 
