THE ORCHID REVIEW. 301 
that the petals are very concave near the base. But the fault may be very 
easily remedied, by placing one finger at the back of the petal and the 
thumb at the front and carefully bending it, so as to make the concave 
surface convex, after which the beautiful veining is no longer hidden. 
There are two very distinct varieties of this fine Orchid ; flavescens (Rolfe in 
Gard. Chron., 1889, ii. p. 38), in which the whole of the maroon-purple has 
vanished, leaving the flower a most beautiful yellow, and another in which 
the sepals are almost wholly suffused with blackish purple, an unusually 
dark form to which the name of var. tenebrosum is specially applicable. 
CATTLEYA ELDORADO. 
Quite a number of flowers of this charming Cattleya have recently been 
received, with inquiries respecting them, and the following notes will 
doubtless prove interesting, especially as its early history has not been 
recorded. It is usually said to have been first introduced by M. Linden, 
about the year 1866, but it really appeared in cultivation thirteen years 
before this. It flowered in the collection of Mr. Hadwen, of Liverpool, in 
May, 1853, when a flower was sent to Dr. Lindley, with the information 
that it had been obtained from ‘‘ Barra do Rio Negro.” This appears to 
have been the original appearance of the species, though it did not receive 
its name until many years later. 
M. Linden’s plants were collected by Gustav Wallis, who, in 1866, 
explored the low-lying district where the waters of the Rio Negro pour into 
the Amazon. Here he obtained the Cattleya, and sent plants to M. Linden, 
at Brussels, which flowered during 1867, and one of the first was exhibited 
at Paris under the name of Cattleya Eldorado. It remained scarce until 
1876, when M. Binot, a French collector, sent an importation home. Some 
varieties soon appeared, for in 1868 both C. E. rosea and C. E. splendens 
received First-class Certificates from the Royal Horticultural Society when 
exhibited by M. Linden. The former had flowers of a more rosy hue than 
the type, and the latter, again, differed in having some deep rose-purple 
round the front of the lip. In 1876 a white form appeared, which was 
called variety virginalis, and a very similar form received the name of 
Cattleya Wallisii in 1882. A year later the variety ornata was described, 
its chief peculiarity being the presence of a rose-purple blotch at the apex 
of the sepals. The one called crocata appeared in 1836, and is characterised 
by having the disc of the deep orange, and prolonged in a line to the base 
of the lip. More recently some other forms have received varietal names. 
In 1877 the species was again described by M-. Barbosa Rodrigues as 
€. trichopiliochila (as pointed out at p. 206), in allusion to a supposed 
resemblance in the lip to that of a Trichopilia. It usually flowers during 
July and August. 
