THE ORCHID WORLD. 



Vol. 6. No. 2. 



November, 1915. 



NOTES. 



CiRRHOPETALUM CHINENSE. — There is no 

 longer any occasion for speculative minds to 

 occupy themselves with the important investi- 

 gation of the cause that may have led the 

 Chinese to invent strange figures of men and 

 women with their chins in perpetual motion, 

 for here is the explanation of it. We have 

 here a plant from China, one of whose lobes 

 is exactly a tongue and chin, which are so 

 unstable as to be in a state of continual 

 oscillation. The flowers are very large for 

 the genus, in general appearance like those of 

 C. maculosum. The petals and upper sepal 

 are purple, the lateral sepals are yellowish- 

 green. The flowers are arranged in a circle, 

 and all look outwards, so that on whatever 

 side the umbel is regarded it still presents to 

 the eye the same row of grinning faces and 

 wagging chins. Messrs. Loddiges imported 

 it from China. — T)r. Lindlcy in the 

 " Botanical Register" 18^2. 



•/.'i ?,S 



Blue Cattleyas. — Among the many 

 ambitions of the early day hybridists was the 

 production of a blue Cattleya, not one 

 perhaps equal in colour to Vanda coerulea, 

 which would be beyond expectations, but one 

 in which the usual mauve and purple tints 

 were replaced by a bluish colour. No doubt 

 the most successful results have been obtained 

 in the Gatton Park collection, and when Sir 

 Jeremiah Colman, Bart., exhibited numerous 

 examples at a meeting of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural -Society it was evident to one and all 

 that not only had the subject assumed a 

 practical form, but that a considerable advance 

 in the desired direction had been achieved. 

 The plants were Cattleya Portia var. coerulea, 



obtained by crossing C. Bowringiana lilacina 

 with C. labiata coerulea. The flowers were of 

 a delicate lavender-blue colour, with the 

 labellum darker and more correctly described 

 as slaty-blue. Quite recently, in the same 

 noted collection, have appeared some attrac- 

 tive varieties of Cattleya Alcimeda, produced 

 by crossing C. labiata coerulea with C. 

 Gaskelliana coerulescens, and in which the 

 special feature is a large labellum having the 

 central portion bright violet-blue, thus making 

 a pleasing as well as an interesting addition 

 to this distinct section of the genus. 



^ isE 



Cattleya Eldorado. — Considering the 

 beautiful hybrids of C. Eldorado that have 

 recently been exhibited by Messrs. Hassall 

 and Co., the following particulars from 

 VeitcJis Orchid Manual are of interest. This 

 species was first imported by M. Linden about 

 the year 1866 from the region of the Rio 

 Negro in Brazil, and one of the first plants to 

 flower in Europe was exhibited by him at 

 Paris, in 1867. This Cattleya continued 

 scarce for some years, till an importation from 

 the same region m 1876 by M. Binot, a 

 French collector of Orchids in Brazil, caused 

 it to become more generally distributed 

 among the collections both in this country 

 and on the Continent. Its habitat is near the 

 Rio Negro, not far from its confluence with 

 the Amazon, a significant fact in the 

 geographical distribution of the Cattleyas of 

 the labiata group, and which cultivators will 

 do well to bear in mind, as that part of the 

 region where C. Eldorado occurs lies lower, 

 its climate is hotter, and the alternation of 



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