298 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



being much reduced, it should be added that the flowers attain an expanse 

 of nearly six inches, and that the petals are ii inches broad, the front lobe 

 of the lip being still broader. This plant is now flowering for the first time, 

 and has probably not yet attained its full development. The varietal name 

 was given by -the Manchester Committee, to distinguish it from the one 

 exhibited by Messrs. Charlesworth at the previous meeting, but we are 

 unable to say how it differs from the original form. It is certainly a very 

 beautiful hybrid. 



HISTORY OF ORCHID CULTIVATION. 



{Continued from page 112.) 

 The Botanical Register continued to be the medium in which most of the 

 novelties were published, and its pages for 1843 contain several interesting 

 additions to the ranks of cultivated Orchids. Among them was the 

 remarkable Cycnoches pentadactylon (t. 22), which first flowered with 

 Mr. Veitch, of Exeter, in March of the previous year. Its distinctness from. 

 C. maculatum was at first doubted, on account of what was then thought 

 to be the sportive character of the genus, but the appearance of a second 

 plant, obtained by Messrs. Loddiges from Brazil direct, induced Lindley to 

 admit it as a good species. 



About this period Cycnoches, and the allied genus Catasetum, were 

 attracting much attention by their supposed sportive tendencies, and 

 at page 77 of the "Miscellaneous Matter" to this volume we find a 

 figure of a remarkable inflorescence of a species of Cycnoches, 

 from the collection of R. S. Holford, Esq., of Westonbirt, Tetbury, 

 which was described as bearing flowers of " C. ventricosum and C. 

 KgeTtomznMm intermixed" (the italics are Lindley's). The one previously 

 described and figured by Mr. Bateman (Orch. Mex. and Guat., t. 40) had 

 borne the two kinds on separate inflorescences. Mr. Holford's plant had 

 been obtained from Messrs. Rollisson, of Tooting, as C. ventricosum, and 

 was exhibited at a meeting of the Horticultural Society. The inflorescence 

 bore five flowers, and Lindley remarked that the lowermost flower was 

 more Egertonianum than ventricosum ; the second almost wholly ventri- 

 cosum, but its lip here and there raised into warts; in the next the purple 

 of Egertonianum was displacing the green of C. ventricosum ; while in the 

 two remaining flowers the transformation was complete. " With such 

 cases as this" he continued, " all ideas of species and stability of structure 

 in the vegetable kingdom are shaken to their foundation." Had he known 

 that the two kinds of flowers were the two sexes of a single species, and 

 that the green ones were not C. ventricosum at all, his remarks would have 

 been very different. 



