THE ORCHID REVIEW. 298 
LISSOCHILUS GIGANTEUS. 
THE article at page 268 on the remarkable Grammatophyllum speciosum 
recalls another gigantic Orchid which has flowered in cultivation on four 
different occasions, namely Lissochilus giganteus, the largest and one of 
the most beautiful of West Tropical Orchids. Some plants were brought 
from the Congo by the late M. Auguste Linden, and one of these flowered 
in the Burford collection in May, 1888, and was exhibited by Sir Trevor 
Lawrence at the Temple Show, which enabled a large number of Orchidists 
to judge of its remarkable character. It had only been in the collection , 
seven months when the event occurred. Since then it has flowered 
successively in the collections of D. Tod, Esq., Eastwood Park, Giffnock, 
Glasgow, M. le Duc de Massa, Franconville, France, and Holbrook Gaskell, 
Esq., Woolton Wood, Liverpool. The species was first discovered by the 
late Dr. Welwitsch, before 1862 or 1863, in the Angolan province of 
Golungo Alto, where it is said to be spread over nearly the whole district in 
wooded spongy bogs, and is occasionally submerged, and afterwards 
roasted in a soil as hard as a brick. 
Some idea of the plant and its habitat may be gathered from the 
following extract from Mr. H. H. Johnston’s work, The River Congo :— 
‘‘In the marshy spots, down near the river shore, are masses of that 
splendid Orchid, Lissochilus giganteus, a terrestrial species that shoots up 
often to the height of sixteen feet from the ground, bearing such a head 
of red-mauve, golden, scented blossoms, as scarcely any flower in the world 
can equal for beauty and delicacy of form. These Orchids, with their light 
green, spear-like leaves, and their tall swaying flower-stalks, grow in groups 
of forty and fifty together, often reflected in the shallow pools of stagnant 
water round their base, and filling up the foreground of the high purple- 
green forest with a blaze of tender peach-like colour . . . . . Clumps 
of a dwarf Palm, Phoenix spinosa, which bears a just eatable starveling 
Date, hedge in these beautiful Orchids from the wash of the river, and 
seem a sort of watermark that the tides rarely pass; but water often leaks 
through the mud and vegetable barrier, and forms inside the ring of dwarf 
palms many little quiet lagoons, not necessarily unhealthy, for the water 
is changed and stirred by each recurring tide.” 
It was also met with by Mr. Monteiro, at Porto da Lenha, about forty or 
fifty miles from Banana, the latter place being situated at the mouth of 
the river Congo, the event being thus recorded :— 
‘““ We here found growing in the mud, and with the roots covered by the 
river at high water, the lovely Lissochilus giganteus in full bloom; we 
collected some of its roots, which reached England safely, and are now 
growing in Kew Gardens.”—Monteiro, Angola and the River Congo, i., p. 82. 
