88 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [Marcu, 1908, 
DENDROBIUM DELICATUM, 
A PHOTOGRAPH of a fine plant of Dendrobium Kingianum album, showing 
over a lozen racemes, also. a pseudobulb, with three leaves and two 
racemes, has been sent by T. J. Wheeler, Esq., Fairlawn House, Frome, 
Mr. Wheeler remarks that he had it three years without flowering, but that 
now it is a lovely sight. The variety originally appeared in the collection 
of the late A. H. Smee, Esq., of Carshalton, and was figured in the Orchid 
Album, in 1888 (vol. vii. t. 332). Mr. Wheeler’s plant agrees well, but is 
evidently not the original plant. It is doubtful, however, whether the plant 
is a true variety of D. Kingianum. Mr. Cooper, of St. Albans, believes it 
to be a form of D. delicatum, Bailey, whose history has been given in these 
pages (0.2. xv. p. 139), of which some plants were imported from Queens- 
land last year, but which have not yet flowered. This D. delicatum is 
rather a mystery, for Bailey at first described it asa variety of D. speciosum, 
yet in general appearance it is rather more like D. Kingianum. Bailey 
gives the habitat as Toowoomba, on the Main Range, where it was collected 
by B. Crow, and singularly enough D. Kingianum var. pallidum, Bail., was 
also found on the Main Range by the same collector. 
to have white flowers, tinged with lilac and spotted with 
the lip, 
This variety is said 
the same colour on 
and although I have not seen an authentic example, I believe it 
agrees with the so-called pale form of D. Kingianum which is in cultivation, 
The flower of this latter has a shorter more curved mentum, and a differently- 
shaped lip, without the three prominent keels of D. Ki 
this also to be a hybrid of similar origin. 
obtuse sepals than the so-called D. Kingianum 
lip are nearly obsolete. It is tather cufious that the plant should have first 
been made a variety of one species then of the other, and finally separated 
from both. And it is significant that it should present several unmistakably 
intermediate characters. The typical forms of D. Kingianum and D. 
speciosum are very distinct from each other, and both are rather widely 
diffused. In D. speciosum the lip is spotted with purple, which is also the 
case in D. Kingianum pallidum and in D. delicatum, but not in typical D. 
Kingianum, a fact which is rather significant. In the form sent by Mr. 
ngianum. I suspect 
It has rather shorter, more 
album, and the keels of the 
ial hybrid between the two species, raised in 
Lawrence, by the late Mr. Spyers, judging by 
the description (O.R. iy. P- I07), must be remarkably similar, and I hope 
soon to be able to compare them together. There is evidently an interest- 
ing question here to be cleared up. R. A. ROLFE. 
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