PLATE DCXXVI. 



GEODORUM CITRINUM. 



Lemon-coloured Geodorum. 



CLASS XX. ORDEll L 



GYNANDRIA MONANDRIA. Style bearing the Stamens. Stamen One. 



Petala quinqne, longitadine subaeqnalia, pa- 

 teniia. Labellura cymbiforme ; carina 

 posticc paulo prodncta. Atithcra termiiia- 

 ]is, opercularis, decidua. Massae poUiiiis 

 duse, reniformesj cereaceae. 



ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER. 



Prtals five, about an equal length, spreading. 

 Lip boat-shaped, with the keel a little pro- 

 longed behind. Anther terminal, cover-like, 

 deciduous. Masses of pollen two, kidney- 

 shaped, waxy. 



REFERENCE TO THE PLATE. 



1 . A blossom spread open, divested of the lip. 



2. The lip detached. 



Little more than sixty years ago, Mr. Miller, the best intbrmed gardener of his time, and emphati- 

 cally styled by foreigners, to whom he was known by his writings, ' Hor*ulanorum Princepsj' after 

 forty years experience in gardening, in the last edition of his Dictionary which he published, when 

 treating of Epidendrums, says : " It would be to little purpose to enumerate them here, as the plants 

 cannot by any art yet known be cultivated in the ground ; though, could the plants be brought to thrive 

 by culture, many of them produce very fine flowers of uncommon forms." — Genius and perseverance, 

 however, have completely vanquished this prejudice, and we now cultivate more species of Epiden- 

 drum in England, or what in Mr. Miller's time would have been considered as such, than he supposed 

 to exist : indeed few plants are at present in greater favour with cultivators than those of the beautiful 

 order of Orchideas ; and our present subject, discovered in Pulo-Pinang, or Prince of Wales's Island, 

 at the same time with the Ardisia elegans, is certainly not one of the least elegant. Both its peculiar 

 habit and character easily prevent its being confounded with any natural genus yet described, slthough 

 some species have been enumerated amongst the Limodorums by Dr. Roxburgh, and transposed with no 

 more felicity from thence to Malaxis by Professor Wilkienow. — The genus, however, is more allied to 

 Cymbidium in character than either of the above ; and, as far as our knowledge of the order at present 

 extends, ought to be placed near to that in the arrangement. The other species of the genus before 

 alluded to are the Malaxis nutans and cernua of Wilkienow, Limodorum nutans of the Plants of Co- 

 romandel, and the L. recurvum of the same; all of which agree in having the same remarkable flacci- 

 dity of foliage, and recurved inflorescence. 



The drawing was taken at Stepney last October, and tlie plant was still in blossom in the end of 

 November. 



Some idea of the prodigious extent of this family of plants may be inferred from Dr. Buchanan's 

 having gathered more than fifty new species in llis late journey through Napaul, and Mr. Brown above 

 a hundred, (all now described in his Prodromus,) during his botanical expedition to New Holland and 

 Van Diemen's Land ; and from the statement of the Spanish botanists, Messrs. Ruiz and Pavon, who 

 spent eight years botanizing in South America, that more than a thousand distinct species grow there 

 upon the sides of the Cordilleras ! 



