THE ORCHID REVIEW. 175 
DENDROBIUM ARACHNITES. 
AT the Royal Horticultural Society’s meeting on June 25, 1895, a Botanical 
Certificate was given to a curious little Dendrobium from the collection of 
J. Bradshaw, Esq., The Grange, Southgate, under the name of D. inversum, 
which was recorded in the report of the meeting (supra, III., p. 253) as 
“about two inches high, and bore a two-flowered inflorescence of the size 
and colour of Lelia cinnabarina, with a few purple lines on the lip.” It 
was again exhibited on May 5th last, when bearing four flowers, but on 
comparison it proves to be Dendrobium Arachnites, a species described by 
Reichenbach in 1874. The author remarked :— 
‘Since the time when Sir William icacand described his unique Den- 
drobium amboinense, no such and dinary gorgeous 
Dendrobe has been discovered. Imagine a dwarf stem three inches high, 
with shining internodes a little thicker at their upper ends, and then add a 
flower with linear sepals and petals, nearly two inches long when dried, and 
a long pandurate lip narrowed towards its obtuse tip. All these organs 
appear, when dried, whitish yellow, with a deep lilac blotch at the base of 
the lip. I have only a single flower, not cohering with the stem. To judge, 
however, from the little scars on the stem, it must be a Eudendrobium. I 
believe a single plant of it has been found in Burmah by Mr. Boxall, who 
must have been filled with enthusiasm at the sight, since he dried it! One 
feels that the Burmese plants incline to the Malayan type, since i is im- 
possible not to think of Renanthera flos-aeris (A 
I was favoured with the flower and two stems by Mr. Low. Of course I 
can only describe the things as they are, and am unable to say that the 
stems may not become longer.’—Rchb. f. in Gard. Chron., 1874, ii., p. 354- 
Except as regards colour, the above description gives a very fair idea of 
the plant, of which nothing further seems to have been discovered for many 
years, for Messrs. Veitch in their Manual (III., p. 18) state that the only plant 
they knew of was in the collection of Mr. Lee, at Downside, through whose 
kindness they were enabled to give a description. A flower preserved at 
Kew came from the collection of Baron Schréder in June, 1887, which may 
possibly have been from Mr. Lee’s original plant, as the Downside 
collection was distributed, and only one plant had ever been recorded. 
It is a beautiful little plant, allied to D. nutans, Lindl., but remarkable 
for its very dwarf tufted habit and large brilliantly coloured flowers. It is 
about two to three inches high, with linear-lanceolate acute leaves, 1}-2} 
inches long, and deciduous before the flowers appear. The latter are borne 
in fascicles of two or three and are 1} inches long, deep cinnabar-orange, 
with red purple veins on the lip. The sepals and petals are linear-lanceolate 
and subequal, and the lip pandurate-oblong and acute. Mr. Bradshaw 
