THE ORCHID REVIEW. ae. 
CYCNOCHES WARSCEWICZII AND C. AUREUM. 
A PLANT of Cycnoches Warscewiczii in the collection of H. J. Ross, Esq., 
of Florence, has just produced a fine raceme of male and female flowers. 
It measures 18 inches long, and bears twenty-three flowers, five at the base 
being females and the rest males. Both sexes are light pea-green in colour, 
the lip of the female inclining slightly towards yellowish, and the tips of the 
teeth in the male being quite yellow. The sepals and petals of the latter 
are also a little paler than those of the female. A plant in the establishment 
of Mr. W. Bull, of Chelsea, some years ago produced an inflorescence of 
each sex, on the same pseudobulb, and a figure was given in the Floral 
Magazine (n.s., 1879, t. 381), which gives a good general idea of the species. 
The flowers, however, are represented larger and of a deeper shade of green 
than in Mr. Ross’s plant. In the latter the segments of the female were 
16 to 17 lines long by 5 to 7 broad, and of the male, when expanded, 10 to 
13 lines long by 2} to 3 broad, but being recurved they looked shorter. 
The plant figured in the Botanical Register in 1846 as Cycnoches Egerton- 
ianum var. viride is also identical. It flowered with Messrs. Loddiges in 
August, 1843, and is said to have been introduced from Oaxaca. The 
flowers are males, and watery-green in colour. Dried specimens were also 
sent from Costa Rica by Mr. Skinner. 
Although Mr. Ross’s plant is the C. Warscewiczii mentioned above, I 
am very doubtful if it is the one originally described by Reichenbach in 
1852 (Bot. Zeit., X., p. 734), as an authentic flower of the latter, which was 
sent by the author to Dr. Lindley, is a female of much larger dimensions. 
In fact, Reichenbach said it was near C. chlorochilon, and suggested that 
it might be a dimorphic form of some other species. It was collected at 
Chiriqui, in Costa Rica, by Warscewicz. This collector also obtained 
C. aureum, Lindl. (Paxt., Fl. Gard., III., p. 5, t- 75) at the same time and 
place, and wild dried flowers were also sent by Reichenbach to Lindley, 
localised and correctly named. I rather suspect that C. Warscewiczii 
Rchb. f. may be the female of C. aureum, Lindl., partly because they were 
collected together, and partly because the former is about as much larger 
than the female of Mr. Ross’s plant as C. aureum is larger than the male 
of the same; which is just what one would expect. C. Diane, Rchb. f. (Bot. 
Zeit., X., p. 636) is an imperfectly known species collected at the same time 
and place, but two or three poorly dried flowers sent to Lindley are males of 
about the size of those of Mr. Ross's plant. C. aureum is a most beautiful 
species said to have been sent from Central America by Mr. Skinner, in 1851, 
but it is not recorded in whose collection it flowered. It was in this very year 
that some of Warscewicz’s Chiriqui plants—which had been sold at 
Stevens’ Rooms—flowered for the first time in cultivation, and I should 
not be at all surprised if Cycnoches aureum were one of them. The 
